


Home Out In The Wind

by bomberqueen17



Series: Home Out In The Wind [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (the hair symbolizes things), Agender Character, Angst and Humor, Bros to lovers, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Platonic bed sharing, Poe Dameron hurts so pretty, Poe Dameron: Space Latino, Spivak Pronouns, Unsafe Sex, agender BB-8, aircraft crash, career military, droid sentience, finn is very brave, mention of minor sexual objectification of a possible minor, miscommunications, no longer platonic bedsharing, overly serious handjobs, poe dameron's hair, poorly-negotiated kink, stormtrooper recovery, supportive coworkers, the concept of a dating scene, totally un-negotiated mild kink, unconsummated praise kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-05-29 11:06:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 89,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6372322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe gave up a lot of things when he defected to the Resistance, but there's always more to lose. War is an expensive lifestyle. You've got to keep your affairs in order and do the best you can with what you have. He owes this former Stormtrooper a life-debt, and beyond that he knows the kid's exceptional, so he's going to do everything he can to get the kid a fair start in this messy business.<br/>Finn wakes up and has no idea what to do beyond joining the Resistance, but he knows he’s got to keep up with Poe somehow. </p><p>BB-8 really just thinks the two of them should go ahead and do that thing that biological organisms seem to spend so much time thinking about where they rub themselves on each other, already, because <i>clearly</i> that needs to happen.</p><p>STORY IS COMPLETE, sequel to follow. Warning: The story ends with a romantic subplot unresolved, just a plot arc complete. The romantic subplot is slated to resolve, but does not within this story. I don't want to promise a HEA that I don't deliver on right away!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Can't Go Home This Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/gifts).



> It takes a village. The credits are so long I moved them to the end. <3  
> Chapter 1 soundtrack, and the source of the title:  
> [I Was Young When I Left Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lNuuPDnoLA), link is to cover by Oscar Isaac, lyrics taken and adapted from Bob Dylan.

 

**PROLOGUE**

_Yavin 4, two months after the loss of the freighter_ Yssira Zyde

 

“Kes,” Tia Norasol called over the fence as Kes trudged up the walkway from the little bay where the neighborhood parked their speeders. “Kes, sweetie, could you come over a minute?”

“Just a moment,” Kes called back gruffly, and went into his house to set his things down. The housedroid was stuck in a corner again, trying fitfully to right itself, and he said, “Hang on, I’ll fix you in a sec,” and turned the thing off rather than see it keep smacking itself. It was _such_ a piece of shit now that Kes had nobody to help him fix up its idiosyncratic programming, but it didn’t bear thinking about and he couldn’t bring himself to replace it.

A certain someone had painstakingly installed the chips that let it be bilingual, and had manually corrected all the faults that arose, and had tinkered patiently with it every time he was home on leave, and then had deserted, and left forever. It wasn’t that Kes was sentimental about the droid, but-- well, he was eventually going to have to face the fact that he was sentimental about the damn droid, and he was putting that off as long as he could.

He went back out and down the little pathway through the yard to Norasol’s fence and the gate he’d installed there, and went through. “Is everything okay, auntie?” he asked. She wasn’t really his aunt, she was his mother’s best friend, but blood had never really mattered to this family.

She beckoned him in the kitchen door. He came over almost every day, at least to stop in, usually to bring her food and be fed in return. She was past eighty now, and still mostly self-sufficient, but with her husband gone, and his parents and son gone, they had become a sad little pair of survivors. If she had another bad fall, he’d make her move into his house, but as long as she didn’t need her cane every day, he’d keep what little freedom he had.

Not that he needed it for anything, but it was the principle. It was kind of all he had.

“A strange man came by,” she said, “nobody I knew, nobody who knew anybody I knew. And he gave me this.” She held up a data chip between her sturdy old forefinger and thumb.

“Are you involved with smugglers?” Kes asked, half alarmed and half amused. It would be just like Norasol to get bored in her retirement. She’d done more dramatic things. None could accuse her of having had a misspent youth, or middle age.

“It’s for you,” she said, “but I am a nosy old bat and so I watched it.” She gestured with the chip, then put it into her holodeck, and instantly an image popped up-- because Kes had inexpertly configured the thing for her, but it worked well enough, he wasn’t so hopeless as all that.

The image was a woman about Kes’s own age with elaborately pulled-back hair, and Kes knew who it was not by directly recognizing her but by the way Norasol instantly grabbed his arm to keep him from leaving.

“Kes Dameron,” Leia Organa said.

“Nope,” Kes said, like it had been yanked right out of him; it was the first word he’d said in Basic in three days.

“Shut up,” Norasol said, and tightened her grip so he couldn’t reach out and turn the holo off either.

“I’m sorry that I’ve taken so much from your family,” Leia said. “I’m sure you know by now that Poe is here. I know how you feel, believe me, and I would have sent him away, to spare you, Sergeant, but I can’t afford to. You must know how good he is.”

She looked so old, so tired, but incredibly serene, somehow above all of it.

She’d sent him a message when she’d formed the Resistance, but it had been in text. He’d written back, after much deliberation and a deleted two-page rant, _Fuck off._ She had probably been angry but serene about it. It was her normal state of being. How fucking _dare_ she.

“He’s so good, Dameron. I’ve no right to ask anything, or demand anything, but I’m telling you, from a very deep and very dark place, I’m telling you not to waste your anger on him. There is so much to be angry about. Please don’t let your son think you don’t love him anymore. Even if you disapprove of something he’s doing, even if you are upset with him-- don’t push him away, don’t close him out. Please.”

“Fuck you,” Kes said.

“Ah! Your _mouth_ ,” Norasol hissed, pinching him viciously. He was too upset to flinch.

“If you want to send him any kind of message,” Leia said, and she wasn’t pleading or fawning, she was classic Leia, all steel and resolve, “I have enclosed drop point coordinates. I will see to it that he gets anything you send, Kes.” She leaned in toward the camera. “ _You_ have a son who still loves you, Dameron. Don’t be ungrateful.” And it was the rawest fury Kes had ever seen from Leia Organa, which was really saying something since he’d known her in wartime.

The holo ended. “Let none say that Leia Organa has mellowed in her old age,” Norasol said.

“I hate her,” Kes said.

“It wasn’t her fault, what happened to Shara,” Norasol said.

Kes gently but firmly removed his arm from Norasol’s grasp. “Don’t speak of her to me,” he said.

“She’s _right_ , Kes,” Norasol said.

Kes pulled himself together, going completely still, and said to Norasol, “I _will_ be alone in this world if you take their side.”

“You have a heart of ice,” Norasol said bitterly.

“Yes,” Kes said, “I do,” and turned and left. It was all he had.

 

__________

_Resistance Base, D’Qar, Ileenium System, a month later_

 

“That was some damn good flying,” Asty said. “I mean, you really _can_ fly anything, Dameron, I figured it was just bragging, but—"

“Hey,” Poe said, pleased, “thanks, that means a lot coming from you.” Mostly Asty talked shit but sometimes he was sincere, Poe was learning, and this really sounded like sincerity.

“He’s not all talk,” Arana said. “So there was one time back at the Academy, we—"

“Dameron,” Nerro said, and Poe paused. Arana fetched up next to him, stopping midsentence; Asty stopped a little farther down the hall. “Dameron, there was a message for you in the last transmission.”

“A message,” Poe said. His stomach dropped. His father was dead. Something had happened. There was no-one else who would send him anything. “From-- what was it?”

“Oh,” Nerro said, pausing as she caught up with them. She looked taken aback at his distress. “I didn’t watch it, it was compressed.” She held out a data chip. “It’s a holo, looks like a short one.”

Poe took the data chip and stared at it in consternation. “You never get messages,” Asty observed; clearly, he’d never remarked it before. A lot of them didn’t get messages. Poe had only been with the Resistance a few months, but that was long enough to establish a pattern: any of them who were in regular contact with their families had already worked out how to do it by now.

“I don’t,” Poe said, and looked around for a holoreader, something he could use to watch the message, they were in a hallway in the command center, he had to know what was on this chip. Arana made a strange little hissing noise, and Poe registered absently that he was trying to shut Asty up before Asty said something else insensitive. Arana knew, was the thing. He’d been to Poe’s family home, on leave, back when they were both with the Fleet, and then they’d defected together so he’d been there when Poe had come back from telling his father. He knew the whole messy story. “Something-- must have happened, or--”

“Here,” Nerro said, understanding his urgency, “in here, there’s a ‘corder in here that’ll do playback.” She ushered him into the dark little conference room, and shut the door behind him, and outside Poe could just hear Arana saying something about _pops disowned him_ , and that was plenty.

Poe exhaled slowly, steadying his hand enough that he could slide the chip into the slot for the reader. It fuzzed, then popped up, and resolved into the face of Tia Norasol, his father’s neighbor, his great-aunt. “Oh, I can never-- is it on, then?” she asked, frowning, and Poe sucked in a shaky breath because she was so old, so frail now, she’d never been good with machines, only living things, he’d always operated the machines for her, who was keeping the household droids in line now?

She looked into the ‘corder, and even the ravages of age had only refined her deeply-familiar beauty, her high cheekbones and her hawk-like profile and her dark, dark eyes. She was _home_ in a way nothing else was, and unlike some others, she had never disavowed him. “Poe,” she said, “that Leia Organa, she sent us a holo, told your father how to send you a message if he wanted to, and he won’t do it, so I’m going to.”

Poe took in a shaky breath and pressed his hands against his face. “Norasol,” he said out loud. Nobody was dead. Some part of him was dimly aware that this was the first time he’d heard anyone speak Iberican in months.

“He misses you and he won’t say it,” Norasol said. “And he’s wrong, Poe, he’s _dead_ wrong, but he’s so angry now. I told him I disagreed and he said he’d cut me out too.” There were tears in her eyes. “He’s all I have left, but I’m all he has left now too, and I’m over eighty and can’t catch the chanticlos on my own anymore. This is not a way for a man of his age to live.”

The chanticlos were the little birds she’d always kept for meat and eggs, and Poe had spent much of his childhood playing with the live ones and grudgingly assisting in their conversion to dead ones. He would have died himself rather than let on to anyone at the Academy that he knew how to change a chanticlo from a pet to a ready-to-cook meal in less than fifteen minutes, not counting the time to heat the water to scalding. Another five minutes and a good heavy knife, and he could have it parted out for you too.

This wasn’t a relevant skill in the Fleet, but it had proved useful to the Resistance once. Kun was sworn to secrecy over it; they’d claimed they’d bartered for them, when they’d come back with a pair of neatly cut-up fowl in a repurposed synthsust bag. It had made dinner a lot more palatable, that was for sure.

“So it falls to me,” Norasol said, “to tell you that Poe, I’m still proud of you, and I love you, and you know what, your father loves you too and he’ll remember it someday. And he’ll be sorry then, Poe. I have never taken anyone’s side against him before because he is all the family I have left, but I will now.”

She fumbled angrily with the ‘corder, and then it switched off and that was that, and Poe really wanted to sit on the floor and cry his eyes out but he could hear Asty telling Nerro a horrifyingly filthy story in the hallway. They were waiting for him, his colleagues-- his comrades-- his _friends_ , were waiting for him. So he scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve, and shoved the datachip into his shirt pocket.

“Bad news?” Nerro asked worriedly; she didn’t have to interrupt Asty because he’d shut his mouth as soon as Poe had opened the door.

“No,” Poe said, “no.” He rubbed his face, knowing he hadn’t done nearly a good enough job at hiding that he’d been crying. “No. Just-- a neighbor from back home, checking in.”

“You’re sure everything’s all right?” Asty asked, whiskers curled in concern. He wasn’t quite as much an asshole as he pretended to be.

“Yeah,” Poe said, blinking hard. “It was just-- it was real nice of her, I didn’t expect--” His voice was going to crack if he kept talking so he shut his mouth, and shrugged instead.

“Hey,” Arana said, slinging an arm around Poe’s shoulders. “As long as it wasn’t bad news.” Poe nodded mutely, and Arana shook him gently. “Let’s go see what’s in the mess hall, yeah?”

 

_______

_D’Quar, a week later_

 

Leia looked up, and Dameron was leaning in the doorway, and it was a little bit of a shock still every time she saw him. He’d grown up so-- beautiful, really, he’d turned out completely unlike and yet utterly the same as the earnest wide-eyed sarcastic little shit he’d been. He was watching her under his lashes, eyelids heavy, mouth curved in an appealing little smirk, and it was unsettling that her first instinctive reaction was to smile back, as an overture to flirting.

She shoved that away, as that wasn’t actually anything she was interested in-- she’d changed his diapers, for goodness’ sake-- but it was a telling instinct. “Dameron,” she said, going for middle ground in terms of a form of address.

He sucked his lower lip thoughtfully into his mouth as he pushed off from the door frame, taking that as the invitation she’d meant it to be. “So,” he said. “General.”

“Something on your mind?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said, with a little upward quirk of his eyebrows. She gestured at the chair across her desk, and he slouched into it, managing to look simultaneously graceful and careless.

“Spit it out,” she said, recognizing that his indirect looks and overly-casual posturing were him gathering his thoughts. It had probably charmed the shit out of most of his commanding officers in the past. Maybe a fraction of the rumors about him were true after all. Probably not, though; what she admired most in him was that despite all appearances, he was clearly a fairly sensible person.

“You sent a holo message to my dad,” he said.

“I did,” she admitted, inclining her head. “It was perhaps an overstepping of boundaries but it was based on my bitter personal experience.”

Poe nodded, not looking at her. She didn’t have to elaborate.

“My neighbor sent one back,” he said. “Er. Pop’s neighbor.”

“I heard,” Leia said. “I’m very nosy.”

Poe smirked, still not quite looking at her, and then sat forward, producing a data chip he’d had hidden in his palm. “How do I send one back?” He looked at her then, meeting her eyes with more uncertainty than his posture had suggested.

“Give it to me,” Leia said, “and I’ll take care of it.”

Poe put the chip into her outstretched hand with only a fraction of a second’s hesitation. “It’s not for him,” he clarified. “It’s for Norasol.”

Leia remembered Norasol, a formidable woman and a pillar of the community on Yavin 4. She’d been fiftysomething and a crack shot when Leia had known her. She’d be quite old now. “I’ll see to it she gets it,” Leia said. She put the chip carefully into a compartment in the back of her datapad. “Poe,” she went on in a moment, “if you want to set up a regular message transfer--”

“No,” he said. “That’s all I needed to send.” He smiled, a taut little smile. “It’s just getting my affairs in order. This is that kind of job.”

“It is,” she conceded.

 

_____________

**CHAPTER ONE: Can’t Go Home This Way**

_____________

_D’Qar, 3 days following Lor San Tekka’s execution_

  
Leia stood lost in thought as the others milled about and finally left the room, until no one remained except Dameron. He was still standing next to the table, looking exhausted, staring blankly at the holograms projected above the table. His face was grimy and marked with bruises; blood collected at the corner of his jaw and had smudged down his unshaven cheek. The whites of his eyes were all reddened with exhaustion and his hair was a bedraggled mess. She’d never seen him other than perfectly clean-shaven, and it unexpectedly brought up his resemblance to his father. He’d been Kes’s spitting image as a child, but maturity had given his face more of a resemblance to his mother’s, especially in the corners of his eyes and the way he smiled.

But he wasn’t smiling now.

“Dameron,” Leia said, and she was thinking of Kes now. He’d been among the people she’d sent notes to when she’d officially broken her ties to the New Republic and founded the resistance, and his angry rejection had hurt more than she’d expected. Kes’s subsequent rejection of Poe had only compounded that hurt.

Fathers and sons; why was it always such a fucking mess?

Poe stirred, and focused his eyes with some difficulty, bringing them up to look at her. He stumbled over speech before he said, “General,” and she wondered what he had been about to call her.

“Get some rest, Dameron,” she said, and on impulse she spoke in Iberican. It made him raise his eyebrows. As a child he’d delighted in having what amounted to a secret code with her, in certain social circles, but as a teenager he’d refused to use the language at all. Maybe as an adult he could use it more comfortably. “You did well.”

He made a face; of course he was upset, not to have brought the chart with him. But he couldn’t have, and it was well he’d discarded it. She knew he was attached to that droid, but either they’d get it back or they wouldn’t. He wasn’t a sentimental fool.

“It was him,” Dameron said, two quiet Iberican syllables, and Leia closed her eyes because she didn’t need to ask who.

She’d known, of course; there weren’t a lot of Dark Force users around, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t expected his involvement. “Was he wearing that stupid mask?”

“Looked like a speeder grille,” Dameron said, with a flicker of humor, but it was bitter humor at best. As a child he’d spoken with his mother’s crisp accent, but his accent now sounded purely like his father’s. She wondered if Kes was the only one Poe ever spoke Iberican with anymore. And if they didn’t speak anymore, then who? “He was in charge.”

“Well,” Leia said. She looked up at Dameron. “And he got the intel out of you?”

Dameron’s mouth tightened a little. She knew well how destructive a Force interrogation could be to the mind of someone defenseless against it. “Yes,” he said, eyes flickering down and away.

“Did he do any lasting damage?” she asked. And that was definitely uncertainty, flickering behind Dameron’s eyes.

“Of course not,” he said, and she didn’t believe it a bit. _Ask again in a week whether he’s sleeping_ , she noted to herself.

“If my idiot son broke you, Dameron,” she said, letting some of her pain show on her face. She reached up and cradled Dameron’s jaw in her hand.

“I’m not that breakable,” Dameron said, but it was, of course, a lie. Everyone was breakable, and his eyes were so shadowed and he was exhausted, cuts on his cheek and his lip and his temple, a fine tremor in his hands.

But he still had his mother’s eyes, deep and bright and curved at the corners, and he was still reliable, like his father always had been. It was Kes’s greatest and worst character trait in one: as he began, so he finished, regardless of any obstacle. “Poe,” she said quietly, “go and get some rest. I still need you.”

His mouth curved in a familiar smile. “Okay, _mamá_ ,” he said. “If you insist, _mamá_.” It was a joke he’d never made before, not to her, even though other people joked about it for them all the time. And it hurt, because she was clearly not much of a mother to anyone; it just wasn’t in her skill set.

But no one was in the room and of all people, even though perhaps of all people he’d have a right to, Poe Dameron would not use such a word to hurt her, so she stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I insist,” she murmured.  
  
________________

_Resistance Base on Nellia (following relocation from D’Qar), 2 weeks after the destruction of the Starkiller_

 

It was hard to sing, lately. Poe kept playing the song, going through the chords and plucking out the melody, and he remembered the words, there were a good three or four more verses that he knew, but it was just such a massive effort to turn the words in his head into out-loud words, and that much harder to do it while singing.

Nobody in this room really cared anyway. He was in the infirmary, with the precious few survivors of the fucking Starkiller. Arana was intermittently conscious and moving around; he’d gotten pretty banged-up but he was alive and it was a goddamn miracle. They’d lost a lot of people. _He’d_ lost a lot of people; the ground troops hadn’t been involved, so their considerable casualties had all been his pilots. Except for two notable exceptions, one of whom Poe couldn’t bear to think about, and the other of whom was lying right here.

Finn wasn’t conscious. He’d taken a lightsaber to the back, and it was-- Poe couldn’t really think about it. He’d live, they said, he’d walk again, and words like _young_ and _strong_ and all that kept getting tossed around. Poe wasn’t either of those things, not anymore. But Finn was alive and that was a start.

Poe, while neither young nor strong, _was_ frantically, tearingly busy, and he should be asleep right now, but there was no way sleep was gonna come, not with the massive doses of stimulants he’d been taking to stay in the air. This was his new home between missions, this comfortable chair that kept his arms free so he could play. Right here, where he could watch over his guys.

He’d been here last week when Altaira had succumbed to her wounds. They’d expected it, she’d been burned over eighty percent of her body and they didn’t have a bacta tank. She’d limped her damaged bird back to base, landed it, and then took four days to die. Even a state-of-the-art facility couldn’t have saved her, Kalonia insisted, but Poe wasn’t sure if she’d just been being kind so he wouldn’t feel so bad about not finding a better place for her to die.

“Forget the words?” the sleepy duty nurse asked, looking up from xir datapad.

Poe tilted his head, gave xer a tired smile, and as the music came around on the guitar, he opened his mouth and sang the next couple of verses.

 

> _I tell ‘em all sometimes when they see me ridin’ blind_  
>  _Gonna make me a home out in the wind,_  
>  _In the wind, out in the wind  
>  _ _Gonna make me a home out in the wind._
> 
>   _I don’t like it in the wind, wanna go back home again,_  
>  _But I can’t go home this way,  
>  __Oh this way, oh, this way,  
>  __No I can’t go home this way._

“You sing so pretty,” the nurse said. He dredged up another little smile for xer, then bent his head and played through the tune a couple more times, meditatively.

“Thanks,” he said absently, after too long. Arana rolled over with a pained noise, and Poe stopped playing as the nurse went over.

“You are due for a dose,” the nurse said. “Are you ready?”

“Taperin’ off, yeah?” Arana said hoarsely.

“Starting to,” the nurse said.

“‘Kay,” Arana said. Poe picked absently at the guitar, watching the Keshian’s eyes roll back as the pain relief stim hit him. He was knitting up a whole bunch of broken bones, which were a simple but painful and slow fix. His X-Wing had taken a couple hits and he’d managed to put it down on the planet’s surface as it broke up, and only really quick thinking by Karé Kun had saved him at all; she’d had to scrape Arana up off the surface of that imploding planet, hook him into her respirator and hold him in her arms, and if Poe had any medals to give out he’d’ve given her one.

He didn’t have anything, though. He had more responsibility than he’d ever had before, and nothing to back it up with, except himself.

Instead of a medal, he gave Kun a day off. That was all he had to give. One day. She was already on her way out for another mission, and he was supposed to meet up with her in a couple of days. He checked his chrono: he had a long way to go before then.

“I gotta go, Iolo,” he said.

Arana blinked at him, pupils enormous-- they usually were, it was the only way you could really tell a Keshian from a standard human, but they were more so now. “Oh, it’s you making all that noise?” he said. “Dameron, you’re a pain in my ass. Get outta here.”

Poe stood up. “Oh, I’m annoying you, am I. Well, you know I’m not here for you anyway. I’m waiting for the actual hero guy to wake up.”

Arana rolled his head to look over at where Finn was lying. “Hah,” he said, but then he looked back at Dameron. “I’ll keep an eye on him, you know.”

“Try not to be too much of a jerk to him if he wakes up when I’m not here,” Poe said.

“I’ll try not to make him cry at least,” Arana said. “I promise nothing, though.”

“Ass,” Poe said, and left.

He’d known Arana since his second year at the Academy. Kun had been a year ahead of them and he’d met her later. They were the only friends he still had from those days. They’d all defected together. If he trusted anyone with Finn, it was Arana.

 

  
“Stars, I thought you were a rookie,” Ziff said, sitting down next to Poe. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“New jacket,” Poe said. It was a decent jacket, but he hadn’t even yet gotten it wet, so it looked like he’d been in the Starfighter Corps for all of about five minutes. He needed to go roll around in some mud or something. In his copious free time. He’d just tapered off the stimulants from his last mission and was trying to get enough food into himself to be able to take another round of stimulants for the next mission without throwing up.

“What happened to the old one?” Ziff said, shocked. “Your vintage jacket? You loved that thing!”

“He gave it away,” Pava said, sitting down on his other side.

“No,” Ziff said. “That thing was so cool!”

Poe shrugged. “Guy saved my life,” he said. “I figured he could keep it.”

“Nobody could ever rock a vintage Rebel Alliance jacket like you, though,” Ziff said, and he was being an asshole, but it was an old game, where he pretended to flirt with Poe and Poe pretended to shoot him down, and there was no real tension to it anymore. Though the dynamic really was never going to be same, with Ello Asty dead; Asty had always interspersed incredibly lewd comments into the conversation with no provocation, he and Arana and Ziff all trying to outdo each other, and it had been sort of like eating lunch in a field of landmines, if the landmines were all disturbing and improbable pornographic suggestions and the so-called safe walkways between them were all somewhat icky pickup lines.

The glamorous life of a Resistance starfighter.

OK, actually, that part was virtually unchanged from a glamorous life in the New Republican Navy.

“No,” Poe said, “but believe it or not, he does look better in it than me.”

“That’s not possible,” Ziff said. “Everyone knows Poe Dameron is the sexiest motherfucker ever to have worn a jacket of any kind.”

“It’s the Stormtrooper,” Pava said. “He gave it to the Stormtrooper who defected. You saw him, at the briefing?”

“I did notice his jacket, come to think of it,” Ziff said. “That was yours?”

“I figure, a jacket for a life-debt,” Poe said, “it was a fair trade. I’ll wear a rookie jacket, I don’t mind. It’s worth it.”

Ziff sat forward, expression going avid. “He must be really something,” he said, “to effect the thawing of the great Poe Dameron.”

“He’s still in a healing coma in the infirmary,” Poe said, “so whatever you’re implying, you can back right up off of it.”

“Oh right,” Ziff said, leer going blank as he decided to un-cross that line.

“I mean,” Pava said, “he’s still really cool, though.”

“Ask BB-8,” Poe said, “ey’ll tell you about it for like, four hours, until eir beeper goes dead and ey needs a recharge.”

“I highly recommend this,” Pava said. “It’s hilarious.” Ziff looked delighted.

Poe rubbed his face. “Don’t set my droid off,” he said. “C’mon. I gotta go take Asty’s stuff home to his auntie in like, an hour, I really don’t want to have to hard-reset my astromech because you assholes thought it was funny to get em all worked-up.”

Ziff’s face fell at the mention of Asty. They hadn’t been… together, precisely, but they’d definitely been close, and Poe didn’t want to know any more about that, largely because Asty had been a big oversharer and Poe still reflexively cringed away from thinking about it.

“You don’t want the Asty mission, do you?” Poe asked hopefully. That’d free him up enough time to… well, hell, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

“No,” Ziff said, subdued enough that Poe knew he meant it, for once. It wasn’t like Ziff didn’t have his own shit to do; Poe knew because he’d approved the schedules himself. Nobody had any time off. “I um.” It was a fleeting moment; Ziff brightened immediately. “You know, Dameron, if you were a real friend, you’d help console me.”

So much for that. “If I weren’t your commanding officer,” Poe said, ticking it off on his fingers like it was a list, “and that weren’t sexual harassment,” another finger for a bullet point, “and I were emotionally available for that sort of nonsense,” another finger, “then we’d be left with the fact that you’re into a lot of really weird shit, Ziff, and I just don’t see that going well for either of us.”

“It’s not my fault you have an ass made for--”

“Nope,” Poe said, sticking his fingers in his ears. “Nope. Nope!”

Whatever Ziff had said, it made the face of the young dispatcher passing by their table go blank with shock. She paused and gave Ziff an incredulous wide-eyed look. “Really?” she said.

“Don’t you think so?” Ziff gestured at Poe. “I mean, have you seen him from the back?”

Poe cleared his throat. “Ziff,” he said, “enough.”

Ziff looked contrite, subsiding. “You’re so mean to me,” he said.

“They warned me,” the dispatcher said, “when I first got here, about the starfighter pilots, and I didn’t believe them.”

“It’s all true,” Poe said. He stood up, grabbing up his empty plate. “Bunch of animals.”

As he walked away, the dispatcher said, “Actually, Ziff, now that you mention it--”

“No,” Poe said, over his shoulder.

 

_Some backwater planet full of Abednedos, two days later_

 

“It was like the TIE fighters were standing still, she turned so nimbly, there was no way for them to catch up, and she was so resourceful, it was like-- and you know what a hunk of junk the Falcon is, it’s just a disaster, from bow to stern there are no two parts alike, it’s so cobbled-together-- and she still just, on her first time flying it, she could flip it end-over-end-- in-atmo, too! It was a marvel!”

Poe rubbed the bridge of his nose very delicately. “BB-8,” he said, doing his best to project awkward embarrassment, though he was really delighted; their listeners’ eyes were the perfect amount of glazed-over.

“And then to escape them, she flew directly INTO the exhaust port of a derelict--”

“BB,” Poe said, putting his hand over the little droid’s sensor. Not directly on it, he knew that tended to smudge, and BB got justifiably mad. Just. In front of it. About half an inch away. “BB. Listen to me. I love this story. I do. I love all of your stories. But this is not the time. Not right this moment. I need you to stop for just a minute. Can you check in with me for just a minute?”

He moved his hand away from BB-8’s sensor, and the little droid oscillated in place resentfully, but made no sound. “This is great,” Poe said, “and I know you’re excited, but I don’t think everyone present speaks Binary all that fluently, so not everybody can keep up. So maybe you can tell the story a little later, a little more slowly?”

BB-8 looked around, and it was hard to say what ey actually picked up from the expressions of the assembled people. BB’s understanding of human manners was an ongoing work in progress. Poe had told em to tell the whole story, and ey was doing what ey’d been told, and it was calculated. Poe had taught this to BB-8 before, and he was pretty sure BB understood, but it was hard to tell sometimes what wavelength the little droid was really on.

“You really put up with a lot from that astromech,” Gegro Palvitch said. He was drunker than Poe had ever seen him, but he was also still in his New Republican Fleet uniform, and Poe couldn’t really blame him, he’d still be drunk himself if he’d had time to get drunk in the first place.

“Ey’s one-of-a-kind,” Poe said, which got a laugh, because he’d always said that.

“So are you, Dameron,” Palvitch’s companion said. She was an Abednedo, her mouth tentacles magnificent, and apparently she had been some relative of Asty’s. Poe was ostensibly here to give her a letter for their kinfolks about Asty’s fate, but he was also recruiting. Of course. It just made it really awkward, when you had to combine a bereavement visit with a recruiting mission. But, that was why they paid him the big bucks.

(They _didn’t_ pay him the big bucks. That also made recruitment difficult.)

“Well,” Poe said. “When they made me, they broke the mold. Or, more accurately, my mother said that human reproduction was some bullshit and she wasn’t doing it again.”

“That doesn’t explain why they never made any more BB-units of that type,” Palvitch pointed out. Then burped.

“I don’t actually think I know how humans reproduce,” the Abednedo said. Perhaps assigning her female pronouns had been hasty on Poe’s part, but he’d been following Palvitch’s lead. Given that Palvitch had clearly been drunk for two or three days, this may have been a miscalculation. He’d never actually discussed it with Asty, beyond figuring out that Asty identified as approximately male. Asty had been a good friend, but they hadn’t really discussed much on that level. He knew a lot more than he truly cared to about Asty’s recreational sexual preferences but that had little to do with actual reproduction.

“Badly,” Poe said, “as far as I can tell.” He shrugged. “I mean, I’ve practiced a lot, but I’ve never actually, you know.”

“Oh,” Palvitch said, “the practicing’s where the fun is.”

“Boring,” BB-8 beeped, and Poe couldn’t help but smile at em for doing such a good job of pretending to sulk at having been interrupted. He slid his foot over under the table and bumped his shin into BB’s side, nestling against em comfortingly. BB-8 was absolutely the best wingdroid for espionage ever. Poe was absolutely not reporting that to the manufacturer.

“Yeah,” Poe said, “well. So the thing is. So we have incontrovertible proof that the First Order incinerated the Hosnian system as an act of war against the New Republic. And we have this new Force-user on our side, who is apparently pretty powerful. And we know she knows how to find Luke Skywalker. So really, I mean, everything’s coming up Resistance.”

“Yeah but you’re still following that headcase Leia Darth Junior Organa,” Palvitch said, and it was said more calculatedly than Palvitch had shown any signs of being capable of, up until now.

Poe squinted at Palvitch. “She’s the only one who’s been right every time,” he said. “You know I’m not just blindly following her because my mother did. My mother’s been dead like, thirty years, Palvitch.” He was glad he wasn’t drinking anything actually intoxicating. On top of how exhausted he was and how heartsick he was, that wouldn’t have gone well.

“And the Republic’s been dead for longer,” Palvitch said.

“You’re wearing the wrong uniform to talk like that,” Poe said. He himself was not wearing any uniform. It was safer that way. Even after all this time, though, it still felt disingenuous. He was not really cut out to be a spy, even though it had become his specialty.

“True,” Palvitch said morosely, and let his head fall against the table.

“I want to hear more about this Jedi girl,” the Abednedo said.

“Well,” Poe said, “I mean, BB-8 was telling us that story.” He nudged the little droid again. It was a good tactic, letting BB-8 be the one to talk about Rey, and sometimes he thought BB-8 was in on it, but other times he doubted the droid was that good an actor.

“Until I was rudely interrupted,” BB-8 said, with hard emphasis, but there was a little bit of a glitter of amusement there.

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Poe said. “You were just talking so fast, buddy.” From the Abednedo’s expression, she didn’t speak Binary, but didn’t want to say so. “I don’t want to take your story out from under you, though.”

Palvitch started to snore. It was definitely along about that time for cutting your losses, Poe thought.

“I don’t think anyone wants to hear my story,” BB-8 said haughtily, rolling around in a tiny circle.

“Buddy,” Poe said. “I’m trying to respect you here.” He was on day three of no sleep and had been on six planets in those three days, and had handed out three condolence packages including this one. He was pretty sure BB-8 wasn’t actually sulking but this acting was bordering on _too_ good. BB beeped, a noncommittal noise.

“Tell me this,” the Abednedo said, “is she another Skywalker?”

Poe looked up from BB-8, and thought, _nope, bad juju_. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t ask. What’s that, BB?” He looked back down at the droid, who unhelpfully said nothing. “Sorry, ey was saying something about the ship-- did you get a signal?”

BB-8 caught a hint. “We should go and check on it,” ey said, lighting up a little.

Poe nodded. “Hey,” he said, and he had absolutely no memory of the Abednedo’s name, “again, I’m so sorry for your family’s loss. As I said, it was pretty rough out there, but we completed the mission, and he, you know, he was brave and it was necessary. It was an honor to serve with Asty and I hope you can take some small comfort in that.”

The Abednedo hissed a little, and Palvitch snored again. Poe settled on bowing to her, instead of dealing with a handshake-- Asty had been incredibly fond of really really complicated handshakes, some of which had involved his mouth-tentacles, and Poe was far enough from his best that he just wasn’t willing to chance it. “When Palvitch wakes up tell him he knows where he can drop me a line.”

“Of course,” the Abednedo said, watching them leave, and Poe made sure to walk normally as far as the door.

Then he ran as fast as BB-8 could roll back to the X-Wing, and sped through his preflight checks at lightning speed. BB-8, safe in eir astromech cradle, said via the text interface, HOW MANY MORE FUCKIN SHITHOLES WE GOTTA GO TO YET?

Ey was a whole lot more foul-mouthed over text interface. Poe had a long-standing policy of never deleting anything and never manually adjusting BB’s programming without consulting the droid first; excising out-loud curse words had been a long project, and had come out pretty successfully. Most people who would be offended by swears didn’t know Binary, but all it would have taken was one uptight commander, back when they were with the Fleet. He’d done his best to shield BB-8 from it, but Poe sometimes still woke from nightmares where some higher-up decided to wipe BB-8 and reinstall, not understanding that BB-8’s learning AI couldn’t be restored from a clean install like that. Some of his fear must have come through, because BB had mostly cleaned up eir language.

But not over the text interface, because who would overhear?

“Ughhhh,” Poe said, calling up the checklist as he waited for the burners to heat up. He poked at the ones he’d visited, crossing them off. “You know, I think we’re good, for now.”

I’M TIRED OF HAVING DRINKS SPILLED ON ME, I TELL YOU WHAT, BB-8 texted.

“Man,” Poe said, flipping the last switches and settling his visor, “me too.” He stifled a yawn as he started takeoff.

DON’T FALL ASLEEP AND CRASH AND KILL US, BB-8 said helpfully.

Poe steered the ship up through the clouds and out of the shell of the planet’s thin atmosphere. “Finish the hyperspace calculations,” he said, “and then you can tell me a story to keep me awake.”

He watched BB-8’s text rendition of eir crush on the mysterious Rey scroll up his visor out of the corner of one eye, making the right noises at intervals, and did his best to stay awake. It was a long flight home. If you could call it that. They’d been on the new planet, Nellia, a week, after the relocation from D’qar. It was kind of a shithole. At least it wasn’t cold.

BB-8 trailed off, and Poe said, “I’m listening, buddy, what’s wrong?”

WHEN JACKET THIEF WAKES UP, BB-8 said, THEN HE CAN BACK ME UP. YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME.

“I believe you, B,” Poe said. “And he’s not a jacket thief. I gave it to him.”

JACKET THIEF IS A GOOD HUMAN, BB-8 said.

“I look forward to making his closer acquaintance,” Poe said.


	2. Hand/Heart/Brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THERE IS ART IN THIS CHAPTER ahem.
> 
> Finn wakes up, and starts learning about his choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't quite have a song nailed down to stand in for The Ballad of Han Solo, and so I keep getting the Ballad of Jesse James stuck in my head.  
>  _He'd a hand, and a heart, and a brain._  
>  It's not quite the thing, though. Suggestions welcome!  
> Also did you notice there is art! Go to the [artist's AO3 post](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6405631) and leave comments on the art there! I am more excited about the art than about possibly anything else here. This whole story only exists because she offered to draw me art, I am dead serious about this (I was like oh that SW looks like just the thing but I am so committed to sitting here in my WIPs and crying, and she was like, but I'd draw you a picture, and I was like SOLD and I know she just wanted like, a oneshot, but I wrote a novel instead because that's how I do).  
> I am very excited about art.  
> _______________________________

 

_Resistance Base on Nellia, about three weeks after the destruction of the Starkiller_

 

 

For a long time there was nothing. Then there was beeping. At a great distance, people bustled around. Sometimes there was sound, other times there was stillness. Mostly, there was nothing. Nothing, with occasional interruptions for vague awareness of beeping.

But then, there was music. Someone was singing. A man. Some instrument was being played. Strummed, maybe. There were two or three voices joining in periodically, but not as strongly; the man was mostly singing, they were just joining in on the parts they knew.

He knew music, but mostly as recordings. Nobody that he knew played instruments, though they sometimes sang songs they knew recordings of. But this, just from the quality of the sound, he could tell someone was singing it, in a nearby room.

He lay and listened for a while; he could catch occasional snippets of the words, could get that it was a story. Someone was singing a story. It was about Han Solo.

Memory came back-- Finn, he had a name now, the first gift anyone had given him, from that pilot. Poe.

Finn lay there for a while, trying to figure out what he’d dreamed and what had been real. He’d woken up a bunch of times; they’d kept him mostly under, in a healing kind of trance type deal, and he was familiar enough with that, he’d broken his leg once in training, he’d seen his comrades get hurt and knew that’s what you did if it was bad enough but still repairable.

He lay there and let it wash over him a bit, and he was already way more awake than he’d been at any previous point. They must have lifted the sedation, and it was wearing off now. He remembered his way through all of it, from Slip’s bloody hand on his face through the screaming of the villagers to the noises Poe had made as Ren had broken him-- awful, choked-off little noises more distressing than big showy screams would have been, this was a man who’d learned to resist interrogation droids, but as FN-2187 and all the others knew, interrogation droids were nothing to what that bucket-headed freak could do to you.

And the exhilaration of running, firing back at his own ship, the immediate devastation of losing Poe, and then Rey; to him the rest of the story was just Rey, and how being near her felt right, thrummed rightness through his bones like a resonance.

He’d been terrified he’d have to die for her, but she’d clearly saved herself; he remembered now that on earlier wakings he’d slurred desperately until someone had told him she was all right.

Poe had told him. Poe had come to see him, had touched his face and spoken earnestly to him and had reassured him. He remembered that, now. Another gift, Poe had given him.

Nothing really hurt, so he rolled over onto his side and looked at the doorway. The singing was still coming through; another repetition of the bit everybody knew, there were four or five voices singing now. He didn’t know who was singing, he didn’t recognize the voice, but he knew he’d heard it before, dimly; whoever it was had been in here before, had sung to the other patients. Maybe to him too.

He stared at the open doorway, thinking about sitting up. He hadn’t sat up in a really long time. He probably wasn’t in much of a shape to do it. He knew the hardest part of recovery was going to be building his basic strength back up. He’d been out a while.

Something moved in the doorway and he lifted his head slightly to get a better look. He was met with a familiar little set of boops, and the motion resolved itself into that little orange and white BB-unit, rolling in to see him. It lifted up its sensor array “head” and gave the convincing aspect of blinking curiously at him.

“Hey, BB-8,” he said, hoarse and barely intelligible, but BB rolled slightly backward in comical startlement, then trilled at him, and squeaked.

“I’m alive, is the point,” he said, because he might as well try to have a conversation even if he couldn’t understand what BB was saying back.

BB-8 rolled back and forth a little, beeping as if to himself. Herself? Itself? He wasn’t used to sentient-ish droids; he’d never considered it before. “I gotta learn your beeps, friend,” he said.

In the other room, the song ended with great flourishes, and a smattering of people clapped and exclaimed, and the singer’s voice rose clear and amused over the hubbub, and said, “Oh, no, I didn’t write that one, that’s an old one. You know mine never really rhyme right.”

Unsurprisingly, the voice belonged to Poe. He supposed it wasn’t surprising that Poe could sing. Poe could do just about anything. BB-8 beeped and booped a little, sounding excited, and suddenly shot out of the room, squealing. He could hear, out in the other room, BB-8 interrupting Poe.

“What’s that, B? He’s awake? Hey, that’s great!” A few other voices chimed in, excited. “Yeah, I’m gonna-- yeah, thanks, can you-- perfect. All right, buddy! Thanks for telling me! Can you go get the nurse?” And Poe swung through the door, and he wasn’t wearing a flight suit, he was in a plain undyed tunic that left his lower arms bare, and something about that struck Finn oddly and made him stare. Poe’s bared skin was a light golden-brown and his forearms were evenly covered in a fine coating of dark hair and the texture made Finn want to touch him. Poe came right up next to the bed and crouched down next to Finn’s head.

“Hi,” Finn said.

“Hey,” Poe answered, smiling so widely his eyes crinkled. He’d sort of faded in Finn’s memory, a little bit, he must have; he was so brilliant it almost hurt to look at him. “How you feelin’? They said you’d probably wake up pretty soon.” And just like that, Poe put his hand on the side of Finn’s face, running his thumb along the edge of the hair at Finn’s temple. His hand was warm and soft, and his eyes were a deep, warm shade of brown, and Finn stared into them and blinked slowly.

“Tired,” Finn said, “which is stupid, I’ve been asleep for ages.”

“Well,” Poe said, “it takes a lot of energy to stay alive and heal. They said you should be totally fine, though, no lasting damage, he didn’t cut through your spine or anything, just fucked up all the muscles and such.”

“Oh,” Finn said. He’d never even considered that. Well, good to have the fear allayed before it was even introduced. “Hey, did we win?”

“We did,” Poe said, “and Rey is fine, but she went to go look for Luke Skywalker and said it would probably take a while. She visited you a couple times but you weren’t awake.”

“Oh,” Finn said, and he knew that, or he’d figured that, or maybe he was just really suggestible right now. “Okay.”

“She fixed your jacket, though,” Poe said. He pulled back a little, taking his hand off Finn’s face-- Finn had been enjoying that, he was sort of sad actually-- and looked around the room, then retrieved said jacket from the back of a chair. “Look at this! She’s got a great technique, it looks even better now. I’d’ve probably tried to make the stitches invisible but she didn’t, she made them decorative. Check out how badass this jacket is now!”

He turned it, and Finn tried to focus but mostly couldn’t. There was a seam, now, though, a slanting seam across most of the back of the jacket. Oh, he must’ve-- that must’ve been where he got injured, that was why they’d had him on his front for so long to heal, with his face propped in a weird pillow so he could breathe without kinking his neck.

Poe laughed gently at something, and put his hand back on Finn’s face. “I’m overwhelming you. Sorry, buddy, I’m just so excited you’re awake.”

“You sing pretty,” Finn said, which was less articulate than he’d been trying to be.

Poe laughed, gentle again, and it was just such a sweet sound. “Thanks,” he said. “We don’t get a lot of recordings out here so we gotta make do. You’ll be sick of me in no time, don’t worry, everyone is. Hey, maybe you can teach me some new songs.”

“We only got recordings, really,” Finn said. “And they were, uh.” In retrospect, they must’ve been pretty carefully-curated. “Most of them were about, uh. Approved ways of thinking, y’know?”

“Huh,” Poe said, making a strange face, sort of blank but a little wide-eyed. “Well, let’s stick to light topics, you’re alive and everything’s fine. Oh, we had to relocate while you were out. Kind of not real safe to stay on D’qar, y’know? So we’re on Nellia now, and it’s nice but a little primitive, we don’t have a lot of power ports and the droids have to wait in line and it makes them cranky. So BB-8 is fomenting rebellion, and I’ve been working tirelessly to combat it. That’s about it for the local gossip. You got any words you want to get in edgewise? I sent BB to get the infirmary attendants, by the way.”

“I don’t think I learned any new gossip while unconscious,” Finn said. “And I figure Rey already told everybody what happened. Rey and Chewie.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, and he looked sad a moment. He still had his hand on Finn’s head, kind of petting his hair now, and it was really nice, and making Finn sleepy. “We all-- we, yeah. Lots of stuff is going on, actually, I was kidding about the droid rebellion.”

“I shouldn’t keep you, then,” Finn said.

“Oh,” Poe said, “no no, this is where I come to unwind, I’d hate to give that up. I’ll fill you in on all the heavy stuff later.” And he did actually look tired, then, lines around his eyes, and the shadows under them were more apparent as he looked up toward the monitor on the wall. “I just figure you can catch up slow at first.”

“I want to help,” Finn said, and he hadn’t really thought it through beforehand but as it came out of his mouth it was right, it was the right thing to say, it was important. “I want-- I lied and told a bunch of people I was in the Resistance but it was only because I really want to be. I want to help.”

Finn had been on his own for approximately ten minutes, back on Takodana when he’d made the decision to run, and it had not only felt wrong the entire time, it had turned out terribly. He never wanted to be on his own again. If he could throw in with a group that seemed to be good, he’d be all right. But in the millisecond of consideration he’d given it just now, he absolutely knew that he didn’t want to be on his own.

Poe looked down at him almost like he was surprised for a moment, and his mouth quirked kind of unevenly. “Okay,” he said, and his mouth finally settled into a smile.

 

______

_Nellia, nearly four weeks after the destruction of the Starkiller_

 

Finn was awake now, as a default state, and Poe was keeping his promise to the intense Jedi girl to take care of him. He’d come back from his last mission to find Arana nearly ambulatory, brimming with the news that they’d dialed back the coma-inducing drugs for Finn. He’d snuck time for a shower and some bodily maintenance, then come back to the infirmary to wean off his own stimulants and wait for Finn to wake up.

Finn had only been awake and aware for a total of maybe a couple of hours that day, but he’d come up rapidly from that, and spent most of the second day awake and learning to sit up again. Poe had spent as much time as he could with him, and Finn had certainly appreciated it.

Dr. Kalonia was being more tolerant of Poe’s hovering than she normally was of that sort of thing. He didn’t like to think about why. Arana didn’t make fun of him either, and it was a bad sign if his old pal wasn’t giving him shit. Poe made a point of getting a solid night’s sleep so maybe people would stop looking at him like he might fall apart. It seemed to help.

Poe didn’t really have time to babysit a recovering Finn, but he spent as much time as he could manage there over the next couple of days. Finn made incredibly fast progress, going from wobbly steps to getting around the room on his own with remarkable rapidity. Poe requisitioned him a hut, bedding, furniture, whatever he could scrape together to set Finn up with a space of his own, so that when he came out of the infirmary he’d have somewhere to go.

“Are you sweet on our little Stormtrooper?” Mowa the quartermaster asked, with more coyness than was strictly necessary, as they filled the little crate with bundles of requested supplies, and ticked them off on their datapad.

Poe blinked at them, concealing his annoyance with a smoothness born of long practice. Mowa was a symbiotic organism, made up of a pair of related xeno species that could only live in tandem for most of their lives, and it made them kind of— well, they had two brains, and thought they were smarter than everyone. And they weren’t entirely wrong, but they were also kind of insufferable. “Well,” he said, and dredged up a grin, “he’s about the only person on this base who hasn’t made an inappropriate comment about my ass, so maybe.”

Mowa fluttered their head-tentacles a little, in what was clearly feigned surprise. “Who knew, that’s the way to the heart of the heartbreaker,” they said. “Love story of the ages. The taming of Lothario.”

“What,” Poe said, squinting at them in confusion.

“You know,” Mowa said, gesturing vaguely. “Lothario. From that holodrama everybody watches?” They gestured again. “What was it called. Doomed Love.”

“Doomed,” Poe said blankly. It sounded familiar but not really. He could guess, though. “Was it a holonovela? Was Lothario the rakish brother whose infidelity was his downfall?”

“So you _did_ see it,” Mowa said. “And in the end the love of a steadfast woman set him right.”

Which didn’t really narrow it down, but as it happened, yes, Poe had been bored enough to pry the translator chips out and watch it in the original Iberican during a grimly homesick couple of months early in his tenure at the Academy, so yes, he did know the show. It was an old one, _really_ old, one of those obnoxious “classics” that was constantly getting recirculated. “Amor Condenado,” he said. “In the untranslated version the character’s name was Lotario.”

“Oh,” Mowa said, fluttering appendages, “of course _you_ don’t need the translator chips. Amor Condenado!” They exaggerated the r-roll, making it inadvertently double instead of correctly single. Poe used to have the energy to correct people for stuff like that, and used to have the sense of humor to do it gracefully too, but he absolutely did not now.

If Mowa knew so much, having an approximate working knowledge of common Iberican phonemes surely wasn’t too much to ask. Iberican was one of the galaxy’s more common human languages and was spoken on dozens of planets by millions of people; it was hardly arcane knowledge. But apparently it was more than a know-it-all could be expected to concern themself with, apparently.

“The translator chips give everyone stupid voices,” he said, schooling himself to patience with a great deal of effort. “Wait, are you saying _I’m_ Lotario, or Finn is? Which of us is the steadfast woman? That’d be some swift work, the man’s been unconscious for all but the last two days.”

Mowa laughed. “Well,” they said, “I’d know if he were. I always know all the gossip. And that means I know how many people’s hearts _you’ve_ broken, don’t play innocent!” They slid the crate over the counter, and leaned in. “ _Are_ you sweet on this fellow?”

_Whose heart could I have_ possibly _broken,_ Poe wanted to demand, _with my own in ruins as it is_ , but the bustle of feet in the hallway reminded him that he had to be at a briefing in about twenty minutes. “No,” he said, and gave the first glib thing that came to mind, which was, “He’s far too young for me, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think so at all,” Mowa said, “but if you’re not going to claim him, you know, he’s fair game.”

“I feel that’s up to him,” Poe said, and Mowa relinquished the crate. “Thank you for your help, I’ve got to run.”

“See you later,” Mowa said sweetly, and Poe hefted the crate-- two tightly-rolled blankets, a pillow roll, a doormat, a bed curtain, a fresh toothbrush, a water jug and a cup, a shaving razor, a washcloth and two towels, a little desk light with an alarm clock transponder, all dutifully signed-for-- and waved his thanks.

He could have requisitioned Finn clothing, since he knew Finn was close enough to his own size that he could guess the rest, but clothing was hard to come by and scarce, and he felt like that was the kind of thing Finn should choose for himself. This was just the stuff so that he could go to sleep in his own space and not be bothered or have to bother anyone.

A little interrogation from the quartermaster was a small price to pay, he reminded himself sternly. And being a know-it-all wasn’t the worst thing a person— er, symbiote— could be.

 

________

_Nellia Resistance Base, about two days later_

 

“You have some choices,” Poe said, and Finn nodded earnestly. They were in Poe’s little hut, which was a lot more homey than any other private quarters Finn had ever been in, even though they’d only been on this planet for a week or two. The hut was small, maybe twice the length of a tall man’s height, in a circle; the walls were a kind of collapsible extruded latticework covered in insulated material, with a sturdy door frame on one side and a little window frame on the other. There was a third window, at the peak of the conical roof, which could be opened by a crank and had a translucent panel for the top. The walls were a little shorter than Finn’s standing height, but the roof rose to a peak higher than he could reach, so in most of the room, he could stand upright.

The bed was a cubby built into one wall, on a base made of drawers, and it had a curtain that could pull across to make a partition and block the light of the roof-peak window if the sky was bright. (“Moons,” Poe had said elliptically.) Opposite the bed was a desk, with a reading lamp plugged into a little power pack that was the only source of power in the whole place. The floor was covered in woven-reed mats, and the walls were hung with brightly-colored woven fabric, mostly in reds and yellows. At the foot of the bed was a trunk, made of carved wood, with an electronic lock on it that was clearly not engaged.

Poe owned three pairs of shoes, stacked neatly next to the door, and had several garments hung on pegs on the wall next to the door, including two flight suits, one of which still had New Republican Navy insignia on it. They were currently rummaging through his belongings to see what clothing he could lend Finn, since they were approximately the same size-- Poe was built narrower overall, but their shoulders were similar breadths and their legs were about the same length.

All Finn had was his undersuit, his boots, and Poe’s mended jacket, plus a tunic and semi-matching trousers the infirmary had scrounged up for him. He liked the tunic, it was the softest thing he’d ever worn, woven from what seemed like a plant fiber and washed and worn so much it was beaten perfectly smooth. The trousers were too big but the waist had a drawstring and so they stayed up, and cuffed twice were short enough that Finn didn’t step on them. Poe owned easily a dozen more shirts, and half a dozen pairs of pants. Finn had no idea if that was a lot or not, but the fact that they were all different-- well, he shouldn’t have been surprised by that but somehow the tangible reality of it was surprising. Some had clearly been stitched by machines, others by hand, and they were of different types of fabrics, and Finn had never really held a hand-sewn shirt in his hands and thought about how it was made. This one had neat but very slightly uneven stitches overcasting the seam allowances, and it reminded him of Rey’s handiwork on the back of his Poe jacket.

“My underwear definitely won’t fit you,” Poe observed, holding up a pair of insubstantial shorts. His waist wasn’t all that much narrower than Finn’s, but his hips really were, and his legs were much thinner. “We’ll have to get you your own. Which is good, because I like you and all, and I’m willing to get to know you really well, but at this point I just don’t feel we’re close enough to share underwear.”

Finn didn’t really know what underwear was, specifically, and what it meant to share it, but he nodded gamely. “I, uh,” he said, and tried, “Even if we get that close, my ass isn’t going to get any smaller.”

This was apparently hilarious, and Poe laughed hard, which was a victory. He grabbed Finn’s shoulder. “You’re great,” he said, which warmed Finn far more than just a hand on a shoulder should. “All right, these pants fit me pretty loosely, give it a shot and see if they fit you.”

In the end they found one pair of pants and three shirts (Poe kept his back turned while Finn was changing, which seemed to be the normal thing to do here; Finn made a mental note), and Poe used a string and took measurements around Finn’s waist and hips and said he’d talk to the quartermaster about the rest. “While we’re there, I need socks,” Poe confided.

“Oh yeah,” Finn said. He’d never considered it; he’d just had a uniform issued every time he needed to put one on, and there was a chute you put it in when you took it back off again. He’d never owned anything, had never felt like anything was his, had never worried about it or really given it any thought at all. The whole idea of preferring to be dressed a particular way was something he was mulling over a lot in his private time.

Some of these people seemed to think he’d been horribly mistreated his whole life, and expected him to be upset about it. But he’d wanted for nothing. He’d never even missed a meal. He didn’t fail to notice that around here sometimes there wasn’t enough of everything, and people made do or went without. Even important people.

He was pretty constantly worried about not knowing who was important, too. Poe seemed important, but then, he had all this spare time to just spend finding clothes for Finn and making sure he ate and telling him jokes. He couldn’t be that important, if he wasn’t busy.

“Anyway,” Poe said, as they walked back toward the compound-- walking at a slower pace than Finn normally did, but he was just so easily tired now, and he knew Poe had noticed and he didn’t have to say anything and that was really nice. “You have a choice of what you want to do.”

“About socks?” Finn asked.

Poe laughed. “Well, that too, but I meant. For the Resistance. You told me you want to join, and that’s really great, because you kind of already did and I’d be really sad if you left now. But I mean, like, within the Resistance.”

“Okay,” Finn said, and he understood this, he thought. “Well, I mean, I specialized in sanitation, as a cadet. I know a lot about maintaining standard systems and designing new ones. I also know a lot about small unit ground tactics and weapon handling techniques.”

“Good start,” Poe said.

“I want to serve with you,” Finn said.

Poe looked over at him, and smiled a little ruefully. “You’d have to become a pilot,” he said. “X-wings don’t have a separate gunner seat. BB’s my copilot, his cockpit’s open to space. You wouldn’t fit.” It wasn’t an unkind smile, though. “I think training you up to be a pilot would be a little bit of a waste.”

“A waste,” Finn said, affronted. “I could learn!” He’d never failed to master any equipment he’d been given even a little training on.

“Oh,” Poe said, dismayed enough to reach out and grab Finn’s arm, “no no, a waste of _you_. Anyone could be a pilot, you just need reflexes and good resistance to G-forces. I think we have bigger plans for you, buddy, if you’re willing to give it a shot.”

“What kind of bigger plans?” Finn asked, suspicious but considerably mollified by the pleasant pressure of Poe’s hand. Poe gripped his shoulder, then pulled him in to sling an arm around him, and that was even better. 

“I’ll still teach you to fly,” Poe said, “because you should learn, it might save you some day. But-- Finn. Command. If you’re willing to learn, that’s what the General wants from you. You’ve got a good head for strategy, a real gift for improvisation, and the guts to make it happen. I’m only a pilot. In no time, I’ll be working for you.”

Finn suspected this speech would have more impact if he knew just what it was that Poe did. Was he important or not? He seemed really important, but that was probably personal.

 

Finn’s own hut was much less decorated. There was the shelf-bed with drawers, the compact circular room, the desk made of shipping crates and a couple of planks, and they’d scrounged him a power pack and a desk lamp and a communicator of his own. But his sole pair of boots and few items of clothing didn’t make much of a dent in the dullness of the interior, and the bedclothes they’d issued him were in drab colors. And it all would have seemed fine to Finn, even luxurious (he’d never had even a chair of his own before, let alone a whole room like this), if he hadn’t just seen how bright and cheerful and cozy Poe’s quarters were.

He lay awake in the eerie silence of no one breathing, no one snoring, no one else living on the entire planet, and spent the night staring at the translucent pane in the roof that showed no movement through its hazy surface. It was evenly lit by the moon, and not enough to tell where the moon was headed or if it was moving. He got a few minutes of sleep, and dragged himself out of bed with his eyes burning and his heart pattering with anxiety that perhaps the world had ended and he just hadn’t heard it happen.

 

That day Finn saw the holovid and got some idea of how important Poe actually was.

They’d made the holos in kind of a hurry, Finn found out later. There was one with Leia, one with Ackbar, and one with Poe. BB-8 showed the one with Poe, projected out on the floor of the hangar. Finn had come looking for Poe, wondering where to find him; even at dawn, Poe had been already up and gone, one of his three pairs of shoes missing from his hut. Finn had gone to the mess hall looking for him, then to the hangar, but he’d only found BB-8 there.

BB-8 had blooped enthusiastically at him. “You don’t have a text readout, do you?” Finn enquired hopefully. BB-8 oscillated in place, but didn’t produce a helpful screen, which was too bad. “You don’t know where Poe is?”

BB-8 beeped the same pattern a couple of times, and Finn wondered if maybe the pattern were Poe’s name. Then BB rolled backward, and spun to project a holovid out to a little under life-size. It was brilliant and beautiful in the relative darkness of the hangar, which was a really big crudely-built wooden-pole structure with a corrugated metal roof kind of lashed on haphazardly, and walls of lattice like the dwelling huts.

The holo was Poe, sitting on the edge of a desk, in his flight suit, looking really earnest.

He bit his lips, and then spoke. “I’m Commander Poe Dameron, and I’m with the Resistance,” he said. He sounded very serious and a little sad, but determined. “I was formerly in the New Republican Fleet, and you may have heard of me because of the _Yssira Zyde_ controversy. I know nobody likes a deserter but I couldn’t continue with the New Republic, not after they told me to just forget about what I’d seen.” He leaned forward a little, intense; Finn couldn’t look away.

“Listen. If you’re watching this then you’ve probably been hearing all kinds of wild tales. I’m here to tell you the truth. I have nothing to hide. And I’ve personally witnessed these things. The Hosnian system was destroyed, by a weapon built by the First Order. It was called the Starkiller, and we have managed to compile a relatively complete schematic of what it was and how it worked. It drew power from nearby stars, and focused that power to produce incredible destruction at an unreal range— the weapon’s discharge was able to travel nearly instantaneously through hyperspace. The first blow it struck was Hosnia. Its objective was to destroy the New Republic. Just as we’ve been saying all along. I wasn’t wrong about what I’d seen.”

He shook his head, compelling and earnest, bending a little to look straight into the camera, which gave him the aspect of staring right at the viewer from Finn’s angle. “We destroyed it. The Resistance killed the Starkiller. We had help, a defector from the First Order who helped us quickly assess the base’s weakness so we could launch a tactical strike before they could use that terrible weapon again. We got their shields down, we got in, we destabilized the weapon enough that it self-destructed. This wasn’t done without heavy cost to ourselves. I was there, you can ask me, and I can account for every blast we fired, every drop of blood we spilled. And so I’m making this holo not just to tell anyone who can hear me what actually happened, but also to ask for help.”

He leaned back a little, and his face went pleading. “I don’t know how many of my former comrades died in that blast,” he said. “When the First Order destroyed the Hosnian system-- I know the Academy was there, I know the bulk of the New Republic Fleet was there, I don’t know who survived but I know the entire place was destroyed. But anyone who made it out, who was away when it happened-- listen to me, even if our politics differ, we can’t keep quarreling. Not at a time like this. The First Order wants the Republic gone.”

He shook his head slowly, achingly sincere. “All I’ve ever wanted is the Republic restored. Join us. Rally to us. We can resist the First Order. We can still restore the Republic. We can make this happen, we can keep the dream alive. Leia Organa is alive. She’s led us through worse. She can do it again. Join the Resistance. Save the Republic.”

The holo faded out on Poe’s deadly earnest face, and Finn reflexively swayed forward as if to touch it.

He recognized this sort of thing. It was propaganda.

Poe was important, if he was making these things.

Also, he hadn’t really understood that Poe had been in the New Republican fleet. That meant Poe was a deserter. Just like he was. They were the same. Maybe that was why Poe had understood him so quickly.

Finn wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

 

Adventures had awaited in the mess hall, an hour or so later. Finn was used to being given food at regular intervals whether he wanted it or not; when one of the mess hall workers, a humanoid xeno with green skin and kind eyes (Finn was really not used to xenos, and he was going to have to get over that with a quickness, he could immediately tell) had asked if he wanted something he had actually not known how to answer. “Am I supposed to?” he’d said.

“You eat when you’re hungry, baby,” she’d said. “Did you eat yet this morning?”

“Well, no,” he said.

“You’re that fella who was a stormtrooper, ain’t you,” she’d said. He’d nodded. “They just told you when to eat, didn’t they?” He’d nodded again. “It don’t work like that here. Listen, we don’t got food to waste, so don’t eat if you’re not hungry, but if you haven’t had anything yet you probably are, you’re a young human and they always want to eat.”

He’d considered it a moment. “Yeah,” he said, “I am hungry. But I don’t know what this food is so I don’t know how much of it to eat.”

She’d given him a once-over and doled him up a portion. “If you like sweet food, put some of the jam from that jar on this, otherwise you’ll probably want some of the powder from that shaker. Try a little on just a corner of it if you’re not sure. That should be enough to see you through to midday but if it’s not, we have more. Okay?”

“Okay, thanks,” Finn had said, and had sat down and made himself try the various condiments methodically. They all tasted— strange, and different, and he didn’t understand what he was supposed to find good or bad. The food by itself had more flavor than he was used to, and he just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking for from this experience. It was clearly about more than nutrition, and he was hopelessly out of his depth.

Poe sat down across from him. “Hey,” he said.

“There you are,” Finn said. “I didn’t know what time anything was and didn’t know what to do, sorry if I overslept.”

Poe smiled at him. “I didn’t set you a deadline today,” he said. “Take your time. You’ll still need a lot of sleep. I had an early meeting so I figured I’d come find you afterward. And I have!” He gestured at the table. “In the best place on the base.”

That grin made Finn feel funny, but in a good way, so he smiled back. “BB-8 showed me your holo,” he said. “What’s the Yssira Zyde?”

Poe’s face did something Finn couldn’t parse, and he looked down into his own bowl. He had jam on his-- whatever it was they were eating, Finn noted, and was obscurely pleased, because he’d finally settled on jam as his preference as well. Another way they were similar. He knew he didn’t have to copy Poe, but it made him feel like he was making the right choices when they were the same.

“The _Yssira Zyde_ was an independent freighter,” Poe said. “My squad and I in the New Republican Fleet were assigned to patrol a particular sector’s shipping lanes, to stave off pirates and similar attacks. We got a distress call from a freighter, under attack, and when we got there it had been hijacked, there were TIE fighters and they shot down one of my guys. The higher-ups told me to let it go but I had to know more so I tracked it down, and sure enough, it was the First Order, they’d stolen the freighter. I don’t know what was on it to this day, I don’t know why they wanted it, but I know they felt confident enough that they weren’t at all concerned about just stealing it straight out from New Republican-protected territory. They were so sure nobody would raise a fuss that I felt obligated to raise a fuss.”

“So you defected,” Finn said, awed.

Poe laughed, and it was a different one than he’d seen before, a bitter one. He hadn’t known Poe could be bitter. “Well. Long story short, yes. I lost a guy to it. The First Order acted like pirates. Just, openly aggressive. They didn’t care that we were Republic!” He was clearly still upset, and Finn wondered if maybe New Republic fleet members were tighter with their squad than stormtroopers. He’d been upset, though, to lose Slip. He understood.

Relatedly, he knew Poe had been the one to shoot Slip. He wasn’t upset about it, but he wondered sometimes if he should mention it. Probably not; Poe didn’t need to know.

There wasn’t anyone else who would ever know or care. So it didn’t matter. He’d keep his mouth shut.

“I don’t think the First Order ever really worried much about what people thought,” Finn said.

“They’ve clearly been operating at will for at least twenty years,” Poe said, and gestured at Finn. “If they got you as a baby. How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” Finn said. He’d never really thought about what the creation date in his file actually meant. He wondered if there’d been a location.

He wondered if anyone would care anymore.

Poe smiled crookedly. “At your age I was just commissioned,” he said. It was kind of a sad expression. He looked down. “Anyway. The First Order must be stopped, we’re agreed on that.”

Finn nodded, fidgeting with his fork. “I just-- I hadn’t realized. You’re a deserter too.”

Poe looked up sharply, at that, and there was a flash of something in his expression that immediately smoothed away, and he smiled with half his mouth, the corners of his eyes softening a little into crinkles. “Yeah,” he said. “So I mean. I understood you. I was figuring I had about three minutes to live and you grabbed my arm and said _help me do the right thing_ and I thought this,” and he reached out and put his hand on Finn’s arm, “this guy, I understand.”

“You ever see any of your old comrades?” Finn asked.

Poe’s smile thinned a little. “Yeah,” he said, releasing Finn’s arm.

“I almost got killed by one,” Finn said. “At-- Maz Kanata’s place. On Takodana. When they took Rey. One of the guys-- we had squads of four. Nines, this guy was called, and he saw me and called me traitor, and then we fought to the death and he beat me but Chewie shot him.”

Poe was giving him an odd soft look. “How long were you guys together?” he asked. “Like-- did you rotate assignments individually, or by squad?”

“By squad,” Finn said. “Me, Zeroes, Slip, and Nines were together like-- since we started blaster training. Like-- fifteen years.”

“Oh wow,” Poe said, under his breath, on an exhale.

“Slip died at that village,” Finn said. That was all he was going to say about it. That was enough. “And that was when I was kinda like, wait, what is this about?”

“Had you…” Poe’s eyebrows drew together. “Had you been in a lot of battles, yet?”

Finn shook his head. “I mean, there haven’t been many,” he said. “We’d been on missions and things, but we’d-- I’d never shot anybody. And I’d never been shot at. Not live fire.”

Poe nodded slowly. “I see,” he said.

Finn couldn’t read his expression. “What’s that face?” he asked uneasily.

Poe shook his head and smiled. “I just want to hug you.”

“You can hug me,” Finn said, perplexed. “I like hugs.”

Poe laughed, and got up to come around the table and wrap his arms around Finn. Poe had a new leather jacket, and it smelled new and was still shiny from however they’d prepared the hide, and Finn put his face in Poe’s shoulder and enjoyed the contact. “It doesn’t do what I want, though,” Poe said, and sat down next to him on the bench to continue the hug at a better angle. “It doesn’t make you safe and make you not have gotten hurt like that.”

“Well,” Finn said. “I mean. You can’t fix past stuff. Just-- give me a new squad, yeah?”

“I can’t replace fifteen years,” Poe said. He had his head leaned against the side of Finn’s, and it was really nice. Finally, though, he let go, and leaned back, hand still on Finn’s shoulder, ducking to make sure he had eye contact. “But we’ll get you a new squad, yeah.” He grinned, and Finn grinned back.

 

 

The General wasn’t like any leader Finn had ever had. She was as intimidating as any of them, somehow, despite the fact that Finn, who wasn’t a tall man (just, exactly Poe’s height, which pleased Finn enormously), towered over her. She looked up at him and it was like she could see right through him.

“Poe says you never had a name,” she said thoughtfully.

“No ma’am,” he said.

“And you have no memory of a life before the First Order,” she said.

“Correct, ma’am,” he said.

“You don’t have to stand at attention for me,” she said. “Please, have a seat.”

He sat down obediently. “Okay,” he said. Her manner was so mild, and it struck him that perhaps it was that she had nothing to prove. He was starting to formulate thoughts on loose discipline and morale and belief in a cause. But it wasn’t a complete thought yet.

“So you had only an alphanumeric designation, and Finn is a nickname Poe came up with because he personally doesn’t like calling a human by a number,” the General concluded.

“He came up with the name,” Finn said, “but he didn’t really elaborate. I like it, though, so I figured I’d keep it. A gift of a name, freely given, can be generous, you know.”

That surprised the General, and Finn re-evaluated his strategy of dispensing earthy wisdom. “Sometimes it’s selfish,” the General said. “Some people like to put other people in boxes. Fortunately, though, not Poe, so I think your evaluation correct. He tends to give things freely, and in his case it usually works out that he inspires reciprocal generosity, so it all comes back to him in the end.”

“I like him,” Finn said. “He’s important, isn’t he?”

“Well,” the General said, “everyone’s important. But yes, he is. He’s important to the Resistance and he’s important to me.”

Finn was still thinking about how long a squad would stay together. “How long have you known him?” he asked.

The General seemed surprised at the question, eyebrows going up, but she didn’t seem perturbed. She smiled instead. “Thirty years,” she said.

Finn hadn’t known Poe was that old. “How old is he?”

The General’s smile was soft, and sweet. “He was two when I met him,” she said. “His mother was a pilot with the Rebellion, and she and I served together. His father fought in the Battle of Endor. He was staying with his grandparents. I learned to change diapers on him, before my own son was born.” She laughed. “Important practice!”

“I imagine so,” Finn said, thinking that over. What would it even be like, to still know people who’d known him as an infant? “What happened to his parents, though? People normally have two of those, right?”

The General gave him a keen look. “You may have some gaps in your education,” she said.

“I’m kidding,” he offered.

“Soon,” she said, “I’ll know you well enough to be sure of that without your saying so, but you had me worried. His mother died when he was very young still. He was an only child. His father is alive, back on his home planet, but they don’t correspond, I think mostly because it’s dangerous.” She smiled. “I’m dreadfully fond of his father, but I’m not holding out for Kes joining the Resistance anytime soon.”

Finn thought of something. “Do your… fighters usually have families of their own?” he asked.

The General’s expression shifted, and she looked suddenly sad. “They can,” she said. “He-- that hasn’t worked out for him, but it’s not because it’s not allowed, per se. But it is difficult. His own parents struggled with that. It’s hard to have a baby and fight a war.”

“You did it,” Finn offered, and immediately regretted saying it. He didn’t know much, but he’d caught on to just enough of what all that drama with Kylo Ren and Han had been about over that abyss.

“I did,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it went well. It’s impossible to say whose fault any of that was, though.” She sighed, a little sadly.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” Finn said. “For what happened. I couldn’t have stopped it or anything, I just regret it.”

She looked keenly up at him. “I appreciate that,” she said. “Finn-- that’s the name you want to use?” He nodded. “Finn, I appreciate that.”

He nodded awkwardly. “I figure Chewie and Rey told you all the details, so I got nothing else to offer there, but just-- that.”

She nodded, and seemed to be considering him deeply again. “Thank you. This has been a very illuminating conversation, Finn.”

She was staring right through him, and it should have unnerved him but instead he was thinking about how Poe made a lot more sense in her context. “Were you aware of the _Yssira Zyde_ situation as it unfolded?” he asked, half-surprising himself.

“No,” she said, eyebrows going up.

“Dameron probably came to you directly afterward, though,” Finn guessed.

“What makes you say that?” she asked, sounding interested.

“If I were him, I would’ve,” he said. “If I’d known anyone in the world like you, that’d’ve been my first stop.”

“I had him sent to me immediately,” the General conceded. She steepled her fingers in front of her on the desk, and leaned forward a little. “What’s funny is, I hadn’t planned on taking him with me. I’d kept tabs on his career, of course, and I’d sort of been counting on him staying in.” She gave a private little smile. “He was going to be my last tie to legitimacy, and my man on the inside, and as a bonus I’d get to keep him safe. But I couldn’t really ask that of him, not when he’d seen what he’d seen.”

“Guess not,” Finn said.

“He’s a man of decisive action, generally,” the General said. “Just like his mother. I’m fond of that trait.” She put her hands flat on her desk. “Which is why,” she said, “I’m taking his recommendation to consider you for a command staff role seriously, because so are you.”

“I’m honored by the consideration,” Finn said, “but I lack experience.”

“We can teach you,” the General said. “First, though, we need to debrief you.”

“I’ve been waiting for that,” Finn said, sitting up a little straighter.

 

_________________

 

No running water in the huts meant everyone had to shower and shave and brush their teeth in the latrine buildings at the ends of the rows of private quarters. Poe had certainly had rougher billets; at least here he didn’t have to wait in line, and the refreshers actually had doors so nobody had to watch anybody bathe.

But Finn had a disconcerting habit of staring at Poe instead of himself when shaving, Poe discovered that morning as they stood together at the counter with the pair of sinks and big mirror. Only after he’d gone through the whole routine of styling his hair did he finally speak up. “Is your mirror broken, or something?” he asked.

Finn laughed. “No,” he said, “I’m used to shaving without a good one.” He gestured with the razor. “You spend forever on your hair. I thought you just woke up looking like that!”

Poe gave him a look of genuine surprise. “Forever,” he said. “It takes me three to five minutes depending on how humid out it is and when I last washed it.” More like five to seven, but nobody had to know that. He could shave pretty fast, and usually made up enough time that he had managed not to acquire more than the usual reputation of taking forever in the fresher. (Anyone whose hair was long enough to need actual tending got that song-and-dance from all the unimaginative crew-cut-havers, and the xenos who thought hair was crazy anyway. Though, some of them had some pretty intense grooming rituals. Goss from the ground crew was a Shozer and had once drunkenly let slip that their scales had to be buffed in precise patterns on a fairly regular basis and it was a big deal who you got to do it for you.)

Finn smoothed his hand over his close-cropped head. “Three to five minutes,” he said, and rinsed the razor off. “And when you’re done it looks like you didn’t do anything to it.”

Poe laughed. “Believe me,” he said, “if I didn’t do this, it’d look very different.”

Finn looked interested. “Did you ever do your hair differently?”

Poe shrugged, bending to lather his face. “They made us cut it short like yours when we first showed up to the Academy,” he said, and grimaced. “It was not a good look.” His father kept his hair very short, and had an excruciatingly detailed little line of facial hair that he kept to very particular parameters, and it made him look like a thug from a Coruscant holodrama. Poe had no interest in cultivating any similarity to that kind of look, and that was why even though half the other defectors from the Fleet had immediately grown out their facial hair since the Resistance didn’t have the same uniform codes as the Fleet, he never would.

(The Coruscant holodramas, specifically, almost always had at least one Iberican-thug gang in them. It was irritatingly predictable. Poe had learned to never express annoyance about it, though, because there was really nothing worse than a group of friendly acquaintances suddenly realizing you were Ethnic and deciding to be awkward about it. Many people never realized he was Iberican and he was happier that way.)

Finn frowned at the mirror. “Should I grow my hair out?” he asked.

“Would you know what to do with it if you did?” Poe eyed his hair calculatingly. Yeah, it was pretty textured. It’d stick straight up.

Finn shook his head. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “Would I have to--” He gestured at Poe’s toiletry kit, which had a collection of little jars and tubes in it, several of which he’d used so far this morning.

“Ohhh, yeah, buddy,” Poe said, drawing it out as he made a stupid face to shave under his lower lip. “Actually you’d probably need to braid your hair or something, I don’t think you’d want to wear it loose.” Well, if he didn’t have to squash it with a helmet, Finn could let his hair go natural. If he wasn’t a pilot, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

“Braid,” Finn said, running his fingers across the side of his head. Poe couldn’t tell if he were enchanted or horrified by the idea.

“I’ll show you holos,” Poe said, thinking. Nobody currently on the base had hair textured like Finn’s-- nobody who grew it out, anyway. Not anymore. He drew the razor along the edge of his jaw, and decided not to tell Finn how he knew how to braid hair like that. It was too late, though: he’d thought about it. He’d learned because his kids would probably have had hair like that, inherited from their mother’s side, and he’d wanted to be prepared.

Fuck, that was _way_ too much of a downer to start out the day. He rinsed the razor and stared into the sink for a moment, and collected himself to finish shaving.

 

[ ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6405631)

_______

 

 

Poe went offworld, and this time Finn was looped in on it enough to know that he and various of the other former-Fleet defectors were tracking down surviving Republic ships and sounding them out about joining the Resistance. Finn had known there was a New Republican Academy and that most of the officers in the Fleet had been trained there, but he had sort of absent-mindedly assumed it was much like the various facilities that had trained him, and it was really startling to sift through the information holopacket the General had dropped in front of him.

Recruitment materials, course curricula, write-ups in media, and so on were fine and dandy; Finn picked up that people didn’t go to these Academies until they were nearly grown, and still maintained contact with their families, and still had a lot of individual freedom. But the real treasure was when he flipped to a folder full of candid holos labeled “student life”, and it was just all short holovids and still holopics that students had mostly taken of one another.

The General was in the room, having a desultory discussion with various other officers whose names and faces Finn had already memorized, and going through briefing materials of her own, when he found it. There had been a number of holopics of students who were clearly off-duty and intoxicated, obviously celebrating; Finn gathered that this was condoned behavior, and facilitated the development of lifelong social bonds these soldiers would rely on in the future through their careers (some of that rationale was hinted at in the written materials, while some, Finn had had to infer; it wasn’t completely alien from how First Order officers behaved, and the adult Stormtroopers, but the cadets hadn’t been given that much freedom). This holopic was of a young student, male, shirtless, on a table with a bottle-- and it took Finn a long moment of admiring the student’s slender, arching torso, curving red mouth wrapped appealingly around the bottle’s neck, and dark, promising eyes before he recognized it.

“Holy shit,” he said, startled into speaking out loud.

The General laughed immediately, turning. “I was waiting for you to find that,” she said.

“It’s _Dameron_ ,” he said, because he’d caught on that people with two names often went by the second in formal settings.

“It sure is,” the General said.

“Holy shit,” Finn said. Poe was wearing trousers held up by suspenders, and the suspenders were falling off his shoulders, and he looked obscene, he looked like he was performing a sex act on that bottle, or possibly inviting one with those eyes. He had to be-- seventeen, eighteen, so young, with his jaw still slender and his ribs still visible, his chest hairless. He was already beginning to fill out with muscle but he was clearly not at his full growth.

“His parents must have been proud,” Ackbar said drily. (Finn liked him, he was solemn but wielded sarcasm on the unwary like a finely-honed weapon.)

“His father _was_ ,” the General said. “Believe it or not. His mother had passed away nearly a decade before but his father was terribly proud of him. Sent me that very holo, knew I’d see the resemblance.”

“Have you heard anything from Kes lately?” Ackbar asked.

The General shook her head. “No,” she said, “he told me in no uncertain terms that he was staying out of it this time.”

“That’s a shame,” Ackbar said. “We could really use another Dameron.”

“Don’t let Poe hear you say that,” the General said. “I think it’s a sore topic.”

“I’m sorry,” Finn said automatically, though he didn’t particularly understand what they were talking about. Poe looked so young. He didn’t look like that now-- didn’t make promises with his eyes like that.

Finn hadn’t really thought about it but he kind of wished he was the sort of person Poe would make promises to with his eyes, like that. He had no idea how things like that worked with these people.

The General shrugged, and smiled again. “Few of us are left, who remember Endor.”

 

 

Finn tried to learn to sew. If Rey knew how to sew, and from the way Poe had talked, he knew how to sew, then it stood to reason, Finn should know how to sew. So he went to the quartermaster after the General was finished with him, and sat in the storeroom with him-- her?-- as s/he worked.

She, or he, or-- they? was named Mowa, and was a xeno, and Finn didn’t know if it was rude to ask questions about what it-- they-- was, were-- so he didn’t, and just tried to avoid referring to it, or staring, or-- They, he settled internally. They had three eyes and long, gracile fingers, a skull with odd protuberances but otherwise approximately humanoid features, a nose and normal-ish-looking mouth.

“I don’t have any humanoid-style underwear that’ll fit you at all,” they complained, going over the file Poe had generated with Finn’s measurements.

“Sorry,” Finn said.

“Don’t apologize for that ass,” they said, oddly fervent, and he thought perhaps that was flirting, so he managed to smile.

“It’s… my best asset,” he tried. That got a response that was most likely laughter, so he chalked it up internally as a win.

“So the First Order never taught you anything about sewing?” they asked.

Finn shook his head. “If we needed to put a uniform on, it was dispensed from a chute, and we took off whatever we were wearing and put it into another chute, and that was just that,” he said. “I never thought about it because I wasn’t supposed to give it much thought. Some of us worked in that department and I’m sure they did, but we didn’t exactly rotate specialties so that was all I knew about it.”

“Things must have come in different sizes and configurations,” they said, tilting their head, and okay some of those protuberances were independently mobile, which was disquieting but Finn was practicing not staring, so he just clocked the motion and registered it as nonthreatening and made himself disregard it.

“Well,” Finn said, “we were all human or near enough as to be indistinguishable, so, not so much with the different configurations.”

“I suppose humans don’t have a whole lot of sexual dimorphism,” they mused.

Finn didn’t know what that was, so he shrugged. “They kind of categorized our bodies into approximate sizes, yeah, but most of the stuff would stretch so it didn’t matter much.”

“Even the armor went in chutes?” Mowa asked.

Finn shook his head. “Oh, no, not that. If it needed repair you’d report it and get a new component or plate or whatever. You hung up your armor and put it back on but it didn’t really matter. That stuff really only came in one size.”

“Huh,” they mused. They’d pulled out a bolt of fabric and were rolling it out onto the table while they considered. Finn moved so he had a good view, and paid attention while they showed him how to lay out pattern pieces and how to determine the grain of a fabric, how to utilize the natural bias stretch for ease and drape, how to figure in seam allowances, how to make the most of a pattern layout on as little fabric as possible.

It was an agreeable way to pass an afternoon, netting him six pairs of underwear that he discovered actually were pretty comfortable to wear under his trousers (and then you can wear the trousers more times before they need washing, Mowa pointed out, and Finn hadn’t thought of that, and Mowa very kindly wrote him out a little schedule of how many times a garment would generally be worn before washing, and promised to show him the laundry facilities) and then when it was time for dinner Mowa introduced him to all of their friends, and he now knew most of the supply department of the base. It didn’t take a great deal of brainpower to determine that befriending the people in charge of fabricating and dispensing supplies was a good move.

Also, they all had devastating crushes on Poe and were jealous that Finn had spent so much time with the pilot. Which confirmed Finn’s growing impression that Poe was actually, genuinely kind of a big deal around here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bomberqueen17/), really do; I have all kinds of snippets and excerpts that go up over there way before I organize them over here.   
> Look, my last end note made them bring replies back, you just don't know what this one could do. I'm holding out for threaded comments. IT COULD HAPPEN.


	3. Their Burdens And Their Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe has a nasty run-in with a former colleague. Finn finds a solution to his sleeping difficulties.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there's an Action Plot with movie-level violence. Slight medical horror playing off a character's phobia, and description of past suicide discovery. 
> 
>  
> 
> Title and quoted lyrics from Johnny Cash's [Out Among The Stars](https://youtu.be/E8Rqe63ZZuo), chosen solely because it mentions stars, but also because it's a dude with a guitar and so the sort of thing Poe would figure he could learn. Imagine, of course, that it's adapted.

 

_A former New Republic Navy outpost, about four weeks after the destruction of the Starkiller_

 

Poe stood outside the burned wreckage of the timber-framed building. Fire had been out about a week, he figured. Not real fresh, but not old either. He wrinkled his nose as the wind changed, and brought the smell he’d been hoping it wouldn’t: there, under the sour-bitter reek of burning, was a hint of rotting meat.

“Analysis: six or seven corpses of humanoids, more if smaller, less if larger,” BB-8 said, awkwardly formal. “Mostly concentrated at the far end of the building.”

“Lined ‘em up against the wall and shot ‘em,” Poe said. He kicked at a chunk of wood. “Then fired the building with the bodies still in it.”

“Which side shot who, though,” BB-8 said.

Poe jerked his chin at the crude First Order logo, the asterisk-lookin’ thing in a hexagon or whatever. Somebody’d carved it into the duracrete path with a laser-saw, looked like. “Don’t think we gotta ask,” he said. “Let’s go.” He didn’t even give in to his impulse to piss on the logo. It was probably booby-trapped; they were pretty expert-level assholes.

 

This had been his favorite posting, so many years ago. He’d been happy here. He’d been with— her. Before it all went to shit.

Well. Didn’t bear thinking about. No help for it now.

 

_Two days later_

 

Buoyed by an interlude of success at tracking down another former classmate who was ready to turn, Poe strode into the tasteful little cafe where he was supposed to rendezvous with Captain Kun feeling a little more cheerful. He’d caught a broadcast of a pretty good music holovid, and had the tune stuck in his head; he might try to learn it, later, and he had BB-8 downloading anything ey could get eir metaphorical paws on at the moment, at the little holo-exchange kiosk on the corner.

 

_Oh, how many travelers get weary, bearing both their burdens and their scars_   
_Don’t you think they’d love to start all over, and fly like eagles out among the stars?_

 

He’d been at this a while, though, so he noticed the strangely-intent gaze of the Keshian at the door, noticed the way Karé Kun was sitting very, very straight at the table next to their former Fleet-mate Uxonia Gantl, and gave Karé a jaunty wave.

“Hey,” he said, “gotta hit the head,” and kept walking, and Karé gave him a wide-eyed wooden grin that said pretty eloquently that she was at gunpoint or in similar peril. Gantl’s expression was very, very carefully blank.

He went into the ‘fresher, and as soon as the door swung shut he locked it and scrambled up into the drop ceiling. He got his blaster out and stuck it into the front of his jacket where he’d be able to reach it, then scooted along in the ceiling, squinting as he estimated his distance, until he was over the table. Carefully, carefully, he swept all the debris off a tile, and eased it off to one side to look down through the crack. Sure enough, Gantl had a blaster rammed into Kun’s back. “—bounty is at a hundred thousand credits,” Gantl was saying.

“Please don’t do this,” Kun said thickly.

“He’s a pirate,” Gantl snapped. “You’re all no better than pirates. You’re a disgrace to the Academy.”

It was a damn shame, Poe thought, but he hadn’t been all that attached to Gantl. She was a couple years younger than they were; Poe mostly knew her because she’d been good friends with his sister-in-law Sanata. Well, probably still was: shit. Well, no help for it. Sanata Callis already hated him enough that she’d probably kill him on sight if their paths ever crossed again.

Maybe he should’ve considered that when they’d been checking up on Gantl’s request to talk to them about joining the Resistance. But Kun had been posted with her, had figured she was reasonable.

Guess not.

It felt wrong as _hell_ to pull a bead on a Fleet officer. But Kun was one of Poe’s closest friends; they’d drunkenly hooked up on an ill-advised school break from the Academy when they were both still cadets, but it had somehow turned out to be just a funny story years later when they’d gotten posted together, and she’d never resented that he’d leapfrogged her in promotions. She was a steady, reliable pilot and had a life-saving eye for detail in briefings. And she was brave, so brave, in a war that absolutely demanded that. She’d saved Arana by pure guts.

No, he’d kill Gantl for Kun, no question.

He sized up his odds. The Keshian by the door was in on this, for sure. There was a power droid over by the other entrance to the room, which was frankly suspicious; it had stuff plugged into it but there was no reason for that, not in a building Poe could clearly tell had its own power mains. He angled his head to look through the crack and concluded that if there were any more co-conspirators, he wouldn’t be able to see them from here.

“He’s taking too long,” Gantl said, into a comm.

Kun squirmed. “He’s a pilot,” she said. “I know he’s been out a couple days. Give him a minute. Sometimes we need a little time in the head, you know?”

“You tipped him off,” Gantl said. “I’ll rhyndo you too, you little shit.”

Rhyndolatum was serious shit, and if Gantl really had any, Poe wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her in the skull. It was an old punishment for piracy; injected, it would cause irrevocable brain and inner ear damage that permanently destroyed a humanoid’s equilibrium. It was a fate worse than death in the mind of most pilots, and its use had been outlawed since the old Empire had fallen.

Rhyndo affected the eyes distinctively, making them ceaselessly track left to right as the sufferer’s environs seemed to spin, endlessly. Sometimes the brain damage killed you, and that was considered kinder; most afflicted took their own lives eventually.

It had been a personal horror of Poe’s ever since childhood. There had been an old smuggler on Yavin 4 who’d gotten rhyndo’d and survived. He’d given guitar lessons down at the community center and Poe had spent hours with him, learning to play and incidentally learning all kinds of swear words and off-color stories, which he had been smart enough not to mention to any other adults. He’d been the one to find the body when the man finally hung himself, and the old man’s wandering eyes sometimes paired with his swinging feet in Poe’s nightmares, to this day.

There was no needle visible in Gantl’s hand, though, so Poe waited, keeping his blaster trained on Gantl. Her mystery companion reported in on the comm, and Poe couldn’t hear it, but he figured whoever it was probably was scouting the route from the lavatory. He held his breath and moved the tile over a little farther, peering obliquely into the room to try to make out how many allies Gantl had. He couldn’t crawl any further, the ceiling tile supports didn’t look that strong. Last thing he needed was to come crashing down out of this ceiling by accident.

“If the door’s still locked from the inside,” Gantl said, answering into the comm, “then he didn’t come out.”

Poe waited a moment. Kun was sitting very still, with Gantl’s blaster in her ribs, but he saw her looking around the room too, and watched where her gaze lingered. There was someone he couldn’t see from here, he thought, probably over in the other corner. After a pause, Kun glanced upward, and he saw her figure it out and instantly look back down. _Casual,_ he thought at her, _casual_ , but it was a lot to ask of someone currently being held at gunpoint.

Gantl slammed her comm down and Karé made a frightened little noise and flinched, and in so doing put one of her hands on the table. She held out four fingers flat on the table, thumb carefully tucked under. Then she pointed at the person out of Poe’s view. _Four opponents. One over there._ Gantl snapped into her communicator, “I’m not going to give up and just take her, she’s got a bounty of twenty thousand and his is a hundred. I’d be an idiot to make that trade.”

The comm distracted her; Poe watched as the blaster came away from Kun’s ribs, already misdirected by the flinch. Kun instantly reacted, flinging herself backward and kicking Gantl’s arm as the blaster fired, hopefully diverted enough not to have hit her. Poe shoved the tile out of the way, shot the guy over by the wall that Kun had been pointing at, shot the power droid in its control module, and crashed down out onto the table, landing on Gantl and slamming her into the floor. Kun scrambled behind the table and grabbed up Gantl’s dropped blaster.

“I wouldn’t,” Poe said to the Keshian, who was standing in the doorway with his blaster not aimed at anyone, totally unprepared. Kun got her captured blaster up and aimed it at the guy who was coming back from the lavatory. Apparently, Gantl hadn’t shot her.

Good. But now there was a standoff and it wasn’t like the law on this planet was going to back up a couple of Resistance pilots. Not over a Fleet officer in uniform.

“You’re no better than a pirate,” Gantl hissed, struggling to breathe; he’d knocked the wind out of her. She was trying to move, and he shoved his knee into her throat. “Worse,” she managed, “because you’re a fanatic, you think you’re justified.”

“I don’t want to shoot you in the face,” Poe said, “so stop moving.”

She kept squirming. “Don’t you try anything either,” Kun said to the guy Poe couldn’t see. “Is it worth it, really?”

The proprietor of the cafe surfaced from behind the counter she’d dived under. “None of that!” she shouted. “None of this nonsense! This is a respectable establishment!”

Poe wasn’t stupid enough to let his blaster waver, but Gantl reacted to the shouting, squirming again. Suddenly Kun shrieked, and something stabbed Poe in the thigh; he jerked away and a blaster went off searingly far too close to him, and he yelled and rolled away from it.

Kun had leapt to her feet, and had brought her blaster back up to the man originally out of Poe’s view. Poe rolled back up to his feet; the blaster had scorched his leg, and his hand came away bloody. Gantl was-- Kun had shot her in the hand, and her face had backstopped it, so she was clearly, kind of horrifyingly, dead. But lying next to her was a bloody syringe. Which she’d clearly jammed into Poe’s thigh; it hadn’t gotten disintegrated by the blaster because it had been stuck in his flesh and had come along when he’d jerked away.

“Poe,” Kun said, shaky.

“Fuck,” Poe said. He still had his blaster trained on the Keshian by the door, and had the guy solid in his peripheral vision, even as he stared at the bloody syringe. The Keshian tried to creep backwards, and Poe whipped his head around to look at him. “I’ll kill you,” he promised.

“No,” the Keshian said, and held his hands up. “I was against this plan! I never wanted to do this! But--”

“I will kill you,” Poe said, deadly calm. “Is that rhyndo? I’ll kill you for even having it. No court would convict me, it’s a _war crime_.”

“There was a bonus,” the Keshian said. “Spare me and I’ll tell you everything! Dead was eighty thousand, live was a hundred, but it was fifty thousand extra if we brought you in alive and rhyndo’d.”

“What about me?” Kun asked.

“No bonus for you,” the Keshian said. “Just dead or alive.”

Kun had taken her eyes off her target, and Poe realized her mistake just as her target shot the Keshian. Poe was already moving, tackling Kun down, and shot her target just as he brought his weapon back to bear on them.

There was a moment’s awful silence. “That went well,” Poe said, sucking in his first real breath in a while, and he sat down hard as his knees gave out. The syringe was within reach, and he picked it up gingerly. There was no way to tell if any of the yellowish-clear liquid in it was missing. There was blood in it, sucked back through the needle.

“Here’s the cap,” Kun said shakily, handing it to him. They both stared at it for a long moment, and he stuck the cap back onto it and put it into his jacket pocket. Kun stared at him, eyes huge and terrified. “Did it-- go in?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Poe said, and got unsteadily to his feet. His leg wasn’t badly burned, or probably wasn’t, or-- he wasn’t sure. He was sort of numb, and distantly aware that his hands were shaking badly. “Come on,” he said, and as the proprietor of the cafe crawled out from under the counter and started to scream, he and Kun ran out into the street.

“What’d I miss?” BB-8 asked cheerfully, rolling up as they sprinted by, and Poe yelled, “Not now! Catch up!”

 

 

The shakes hit Poe hard a couple hours later, alone in his X-Wing, but there was really nothing to be done about it, so he rode them out and let BB-8 tell him the story again of how Rey had outflown the TIE fighters. (Ey was a little jealous that Poe had flown one without em, so ey told this story a lot.) Every time he opened his eyes he expected the horizon to reel, but it held steady. So he continued his mission.

 

________________

________________ 

 

Poe didn’t come back for three nights running. Finn spent two sleepless nights trying futilely to sleep in his own bed, and the days trying dazedly to remember lists of names and dates and ships and assets for the General, between stealthy catnaps in chairs in corners of various rooms. On the third night he fell asleep in the mess hall on a bench in the corner, and got as much sleep at a stretch as he’d had in days, in the mess hall’s quiet bustle all through the dinner hours, before one of the mess hall staff woke him up as they were closing for the night and gently told him to go to bed. He went back to his hut and lay staring at the moon in the window, the silence ringing his ears, until the roof window’s light blushed with dawn and he could go back outside, and then he got another two hours of sleep in the mess hall with the soothing racket of everyone’s morning meal going on around him.

He spent the morning with Mowa learning about laundry. On this base, they explained, everyone did their own; on a bigger base, it was more likely that someone would be in charge of all of it, and in that case you’d sew in a little name tape to your garments so they could be returned to you when clean. Which explained, Finn thought, why two of his shirts and one of his pairs of trousers had “Dameron” neatly stenciled onto little pieces of fabric in the seam.

He was grateful for the lesson, because his old First Order undersuit smelled pretty bad and he actually had been wondering what on earth to do about it.

After the midday meal he reported as asked to the General’s office again and was delighted to find Poe there. Poe was sitting in a chair at one side of the room, leaning on the wall, listening to one of the other pilots give a report to the General. Finn came and stood next to him, and it took a couple of minutes for Poe to look up and see him.

He smiled, and then Finn could see how tired he looked, face drawn tight and eyes shadowed. His hair was wet and slicked down; he’d clearly just showered. “Didn’t go well, huh?” Finn ventured quietly.

Poe’s smile went thin and bitter, Finn’s least favorite of his smiles, and he shook his head a little. “You could say that,” he said, with a sad little shrug. “Some of my former compatriots consider me a traitor. I’m sure you can sympathize.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Finn said, protective instinct swelling in him.

Poe shrugged again, and gestured at the chair next to him, turning his eyes back to the pilot who was still making his report and to whom they were ostensibly listening. Right. Finn sat down.

The upshot was mixed; they did have some New Republic recruits, but others of them seemed to be trying to collect themselves around the remnants of the New Republic instead of the Resistance, and some others of them seemed actually to be more eager to join the First Order. There was some dark muttering that a few strategic ships had been carefully away from Hosnia at the time for _reasons_ , although nobody could quite bring themselves to articulate those reasons.

The briefing went late, and they were the only ones in the mess hall besides a sleepy humanoid Finn hadn’t met before, who was stirring a pot when they all filed in. “Thanks for staying open for us,” Poe said sincerely, as if this tired and bedraggled group of people didn’t include everyone of any rank on the entire base, and from the humanoid’s face he found it approximately as adorable as Finn did.

Poe picked at his food, then put his face down on the table and groaned. Finn patted his back, unsure of what to do. “I’ll live,” Poe said, muffled in his arms.

He stayed like that, so after a little bit, Finn put his head down too, and went to sleep with his arm pressed against Poe’s.

 

He woke up when someone touched his back. “You two should probably go to bed,” the General said, “adorable as this is to watch.”

Finn looked blearily around. Poe’s hair was sticking up wildly and he had creases in his face, and he looked endearingly disoriented.

“Where the fuck am I,” Poe slurred, blinking around the room.

“You’ll figure it out,” the General said, patting his shoulder, and left. The others had cleaned up behind themselves; Finn’s empty bowl had been tidied away. Poe blinked around a moment longer. “We’re turning the lights out,” the General called back to them.

“Right, right,” Poe said, “right,” and got to his feet. He held out his hand to Finn. “C’mon, buddy,” he said.

Poe actually walked Finn to his hut, and Finn hesitated for a moment, thinking wildly that maybe the correct thing would be to invite Poe in. But his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and Poe clapped him on the shoulder and went away, limping slightly.

 

Finn spent another night staring up at that moonlit window and straining to hear anything, any sign that anyone else out there was alive. He got a few snatches of sleep but kept waking, heart pounding, thinking that the silence foreboded something wrong.

Eventually he gave up and went and sat under a tree where he had a view of the mess hall so he could go casually in just after it opened.

He got his sleep that day at midmorning for a couple hours, waking up when everyone started to come in for the midday meal.

That night he couldn’t bear to stare at that moon window any longer, so he left his hut and went for a walk. He had a ready excuse on his tongue, as if it would matter if someone caught him out. He didn’t need to excuse himself. He could be where he liked. But he wasn’t so stupid as to go anywhere near the operations center or anything sensitive at all; people would surely believe he was a double agent, making his move. No one had voiced such a suspicion to him, as of yet, but they didn’t have to. He wasn’t stupid; he was aware of how carefully-curated most of the data they let be on display around him was. He was aware of the tense looks some of the officers gave one another while conducting briefings he was privy to. He didn’t blame them, but he also was slightly miffed at how obvious it was when they inserted false data to test him. He wanted to tell them it was counterproductive, but it didn’t do to look _too_ sharp on these matters. All he could really do was remain above reproach, and not make any of it awkward by drawing attention to it.

So he stayed out near the dwelling huts tonight, walking slowly past and listening. Some people snored, others were silent. Some breathed loud enough that he could hear them. It was pleasant to listen to.

Some of them were having sex, which was reassuring; he’d sort of wondered how that worked, if people slept alone. In his experience, most sex was the sort of thing that just casually happened if you were in bed next to someone who was interested. He knew there were more elaborate sexual experiences that might be possible, but he’d never been invited to partake in any, and had never sought such things out.

He didn’t linger near those huts either, but kept walking. His feet led him to Poe’s hut, and he stood outside it a moment, then noticed there was a sawed-off stump that would serve perfectly well as a seat, so he sat on it. What would happen, if he scratched at the door? Would Poe let him in? Would Poe be annoyed?

What if there was already someone in there? What if Poe’s bed was already full, and he didn’t want to share?

There was no sound from the hut, no snoring, no sex noises. Finn sat and looked at his feet. He should have put shoes on. And it wasn’t exactly cold here, but it wasn’t warm either, and he should have another shirt on, or a coat or something. He hadn’t thought this through, he’d just been so terribly anxious that the world had ended.

He should keep moving, but he was just so tired. He sat and stared at his bare feet in the dim moonlight, and wondered whether Rey were lonely. Probably not. She was so self-sufficient, she surely wasn’t wondering about him at all.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he thought about his old squad then, thought about Slip’s bloody fingers and Nines screaming “Traitor” at him and dying from Chewbacca’s bowcaster. He could have killed Nines, would have— he had been angry enough, and his blood had been up, and he knew now that he could kill in combat, that he _had_.

Nines would have killed him, no problem. Almost had, but for Chewie’s good aim and excellent timing.

As for Zeroes, he hadn’t seen him die. He might still be out there. But then, he might not. He knew now that Poe had been among the X-Wings that had saved them on Takodana— in fact, now that he’d looked at them, he could recognize that Poe had been flying the black-painted one he’d so particularly noted as being a devastating shot. It would be poetic, he supposed, if Poe had killed two of his squadmates personally. Poe, who’d empathized with him just today about being thought a traitor by one’s former comrades.

Maybe that was poetry. Maybe it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t thoroughly familiar with the idea of poetry. He had some assigned reading to supplement his youthful education of First Order-Approved literary works. Mostly he didn’t get it, but there had been a couple sentences that had sort of stirred him. He would get it one of these days, he was sure, the way so many other things had clicked into place.

Maybe poetry could help him make sense of how to talk about his new best friend having actually killed two of his old best friends. (He was remarkably unbothered by Chewie having killed Nines, but having had a chance to get good and mad with Nines, perhaps that was the difference.)

These weren’t productive thoughts, but he couldn’t really think of any way to stop his brain making so much noise. So he listened, instead, to hear whether Poe was breathing or not, and the contrary desire to tell Poe about Slip and Zeroes, just because it would be the worst thing he could do, welled up along with the overwhelming itch to knock on his door and demand company in his loneliness.

 

_______

________ 

 

Poe wasn’t exactly surprised when he staggered out of his hut (in the seething aftermath of a hideous nightmare about spinning horizons) to throw up in the bushes, and almost tripped over Finn.

He was startled, but not surprised. Important difference.

“Fuck,” he said, coughing and spitting. “Holy fuck. I didn’t-- what the fuck.”

“Sorry,” Finn said, scrambling up from where he’d been sitting, on a stump by the pathway. “Sorry, Poe-- are you okay? I didn’t-- sorry!”

“It’s not you,” Poe said, sitting back delicately on his haunches and wiping his mouth. “Yikes. Gimme a sec. It’s okay.”

Finn hovered worriedly behind him as he turned and heaved again. “Oh man,” Finn said.

“It’s okay,” Poe said again. Wasn’t anything to bring up. He sat down more gingerly, breathed and didn’t try to speak, and it did the trick. The distraction of Finn lurking about in near-darkness had distanced him from the fading horror of the nightmare, and if he just sat still for a moment-- He breathed, deep and slow, and Finn stayed absolutely motionless. “Okay,” Poe said after a long moment. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Finn said.

“It wasn’t you,” Poe said. “I do that sometimes.” He let himself sink a little farther to the ground. “It’s done now. Just gotta take it easy a second.”

“Are you sick?” Finn asked, in hushed tones.

“No,” Poe said, “no, I’m fine.” He rubbed his face. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His hair was wildly disarranged, and a rat’s nest on one side where he’d been sleeping on it. And it wasn’t really that dark here. It was a moony planet, two or three moons, always one or two full, and it was confusing and weird and meant the tides were just totally nuts, but it wasn’t so bad as planets went. He’d definitely stayed on worse.

“Was it a bad dream?” Finn asked.

Poe nodded. “You get ‘em too?” he asked.

Finn shook his head. “Not usually,” he said, “but I uh. I got a lot of training in sleeping.”

“Zat so,” Poe said. He scrubbed at his face again. “Then why are you awake?” It seemed reasonable that Finn would be out here. He’d half-expected it. He had no idea why.

“Well,” Finn said, “that’s sort of the problem. My training didn’t really cover this.”

“Cover what?” Poe asked.

Finn shrugged. “Not being a Stormtrooper anymore,” he said.

“You just patrolling the area, or what?” Poe asked.

Finn looked around. “I guess I kinda was,” he said. “I was just-- it’s. The night’s really long.”

Poe frowned. The nights here were reasonable; eightish hours of darkness at this latitude this time of year, if you didn’t count the moons, and a nice twenty-two hour day. “Really?” Did Stormtroopers sleep in short shifts? He couldn’t even see how that would be reasonable.

“Yeah,” Finn said. “I can-- I sleep better when it’s-- when there’s people around.”

Poe blinked at him, and remembered laughing inwardly to see Finn curled up on a bench in the corner of the one big building they used for day to day operations and so on. He’d noticed him there a time or two, come to think of it. It took him about that long to put it together. “You’ve slept in barracks your whole life,” he said, looking up into Finn’s face, and Finn sat down next to him on the ground.

“Yeah,” Finn said.

“Oh _fuck_ me, I never thought of that,” Poe said. He’d thought of something, sure enough, or he wouldn’t have half-expected this by now, but he just hadn’t thought it all the way _through_. “Of course-- you can’t sleep by yourself, can you? It’s too quiet, isn’t it? With nobody else breathing, nobody around at all-- your brain won’t shut off, will it?”

Finn made a wry face. “Pretty much,” he said.

“You were right to come to me,” Poe said. “You should’ve sooner. I should’ve thought of it. I had that trouble for a bit. Some of the places we’ve been-- I like a private room but there’s something about getting used to other people breathing, it’s hard to readjust.” He stood up slowly, still unsteady if at least blessedly not queasy. His leg really fucking hurt, but in that searing superficial way that meant healing skin damage, not muscle. Finn held out a hand, and took his elbow like he was a fragile old man, and Poe laughed but accepted his help. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night,” Poe said, “I’m not going to move any furniture just now, but c’mon in.”

“I didn’t want to bug anybody,” Finn said. “I’ll get used to it eventually. I just, I got tired of lying there staring at the ceiling.”

“No,” Poe said, “no no-- it’s not-- come in. Just come in. It’s all right.” He really needed to brush his teeth, and drink something, and get more goddamn sleep.

“I wasn’t,” Finn said, but followed him in the door. The blankets had all come off the bed in a heap as Poe had thrown himself out the door, so he picked them up and shook them out, and went to the stand by the door to rummage for his toothbrush. He had to flick on a light to find it, the dimmest setting on his desk lamp still making him squint painfully, and he dampened the toothbrush, sprayed some powder on it, and stuck it in his mouth. Finn stood awkwardly next to the desk, and Poe brushed his teeth, spat out the door, rinsed, and put his toothbrush back before pulling the hut door closed.

Which left him standing staring across the little hut at Finn, who was in a worn sleeveless tunic and threadbare trousers, no shoes, looking rumpled and sleepy and really quite attractive, and for some reason Poe had sort of forgotten about how attractive Finn was really, and like, half his age, and that really wasn’t that good a combination. Poe had lived approximately twice as long as he’d ever expected to, and then some, and that wasn’t the sort of thing to consider in the middle of the goddamn night.

Right. Sleep. He pulled himself together, and went over and made the bed, digging out a fresh sheet. “I won’t molest you if you just sleep here,” Poe said. “I know for some people that’s weird, adults sharing a bed if they’re not— fucking— but I mean. I’m not in great shape at the moment, and I just want to sleep and you just want to sleep, and the great thing about being all different cultures mixed together is that you can do what you need to and it’s only weird if you make it weird.”

“Okay,” Finn said. “If you say it’s not weird, it’s not weird.”

“You all got your own bunks, right?” Poe asked, wondering if he actually knew anything about trooper barracks or if he was just making it up in his head. He’d only been on First Order ships like, well— those couple of times, and he’d never actually really-- infiltrated, or anything. He had no idea how they lived. He’d never asked. He ought to.

“Usually,” Finn said.

Poe considered it. “I’m sort of charmed by the idea of just, like, a massive bed and a whole cuddle pile of troopers in it,” he said.

Finn tilted his head a little. “Some of the older barracks just had a shelf along the wall,” he said. “And you got about a space yay wide on it for yourself,” and he held his hands a little wider apart than his shoulders, “but no actual edge of the bed. Some of the guys would crowd you pretty bad.”

Poe grinned in delight. “So it’s real!” he said. “The Stormtrooper cuddle pile? Man!”

Finn shrugged. “Nobody made it weird,” he said, but he was smiling, “so it wasn’t weird, and the nicest ones, the heat for the room just ran right under the shelf so the beds were really warm. I liked those barracks.”

“What if you snored?” Poe asked.

“There was always one or two,” Finn said, “but you just shove ‘em and they roll over and it’s not too bad. If it was real bad they would treat it. Snoring’s bad for you, it can give you sleep problems.”

“That’s true,” Poe said. “Well, I only snore if I’m getting a cold, I’m told. Wipe your feet and get in bed, and we’ll see if this doesn’t help.”

It wasn’t weird if nobody made it weird, so he switched the light off and settled down with his back to Finn. It wasn’t a very wide bed, but it was wide enough for two people to sleep on their backs without touching-- just-- or if they both curled on their sides the same direction. If they curled opposite directions, their backs would have to be pressed together.

It was a while since he’d had a bed wide enough to share; their old digs had mostly been hammocks. It was even longer, though, since he’d had anyone to share with. And he wasn’t going to think about that now.

“Is it making it weird if I don’t touch you, or if I do?” Finn asked after a long moment.

“It’s making it weird if you’re uncomfortable,” Poe said, “either way.” He shifted around, rolled a little onto his back to peer over his shoulder. Finn’s eyes were an indistinct glimmer in the dark. “Want to face the other way?”

“Oh,” Finn said, “either direction is fine, I just--”

“If you feel like snuggling,” Poe said, “it’s cold enough tonight, I wouldn’t mind the warmth.”

Finn tentatively slid an arm across Poe’s hip, and Poe wriggled backward slightly until Finn’s arm settled in the dip of his waist. He sighed in contentment, and pulled the blankets up. He didn’t figure he’d sleep well like this, but it was a stopgap measure just to get through the night until better arrangements could be made.

But even as he was thinking how he probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep for ages, his breathing slowed, and he suddenly rolled off into oblivion.

 

It wasn’t quite dawn when he woke up; he was dreaming, and it was shading toward a nightmare-- that hideous thing that used to be Ben Organa, with the garbage can helmet, was shoving vicious fingers into Poe’s memories and rifling through them like they were funny little jokes, and the horizon had started to spin sickeningly--

“Hey,” someone whispered, and it yanked him sideways out of the dream, and he opened his eyes and it took him several bleary moments to place his surroundings, and the warm body he was curled into.

He raised his head and with great difficulty focused on Finn, who was blinking sleepily at him. He’d turned over in his sleep, he was sort of awkwardly mushed against Finn’s chest, one leg bent and shoved between Finn’s, and Finn’s lower arm under his head. His eyes crossed, and he gave up on focusing and dropped his face back down into Finn’s shoulder. Finn wasn’t much bigger than Poe, close to the same height and only a little more massive across the torso-- his legs were much more solid, he probably outweighed Poe pretty significantly, but it was mostly leg.

“Thanks,” Poe said. “Sorry I woke you up.”

“‘Sokay,” Finn said, and settled back down against him, wrapping his upper arm reassuringly across Poe’s back. “Bad dream?”

“Mm,” Poe said. Sleep was washing at him like waves coming ashore and he really wanted to roll back under it. “Y’comf’tble?”

“Yeah,” Finn said, and he yawned. “Your hair smells really good.”

“Thanks,” Poe said blurrily, and lost the fight to stay above the surface.

 

He dreamed again, but it was all shallow stuff, nothing he paid enough attention to that he could even remember it long enough for it to develop a plot. He woke finally after some restlessness, and found that they’d both rolled over and he was now pressed up against Finn’s back, face buried in the back of Finn’s neck and nose full of the oddly-sweet scent of his skin.

And oh, he was totally prodding Finn right in the ass with his dick, which of course, was at about ninety percent salute. And what had woken him was probably Finn waking up and noticing.

“Hm,” Poe said, which was the most coherent he could manage to be, and he had to extricate his arm from Finn’s armpit to get enough slack to pry his dick away from Finn’s asscheek. “Sorry.”

“See, where I’m from, that’s not weird,” Finn said, and his voice was really low and kind of husky and a lot sexier than usual, and Poe was feeling really susceptible to that sort of thing. “But I feel like from what I’ve observed around here maybe you-all would think it was.”

“It’s rude,” Poe said, “to prod someone with your genitals without their prior consent.” He rolled over onto his back, scrubbing at his face. It was about dawn, a perfectly reasonable hour to get up. He really could sleep another two hours. And man. Oh man oh man. He could definitely do with an orgasm. It had been a really long time. It wasn’t just morning wood, his body was really really pleased by the warmth and scent and proximity of another body in this bed. “Maybe if you’re in an established relationship and as such have good reason to believe that such a thing would be welcome,” he went on, “that sort of thing _might_ be all right, but you should still probably ask first, at least the first time.”

He wasn’t going to think about established relationships. He wasn’t going to think about waking up with-- no. No, he wasn’t. Not at all. Not at fucking _all_.

Finn sat up on his elbows and was pretty unabashedly looking over at Poe’s crotchal region, which was kind of undeniably, uh, _contoured_ at the moment, even covered with the blanket. Poe’s sudden melancholy was an unexpected assistance in helping him avoid reacting to the scrutiny. “I mean, though,” Finn said, “it kind of does that on its own, yeah? That’s universal.”

“It, well, mostly,” Poe said, shocked out of his moment of brooding by how fucking _adorable_ Finn was. Astonishingly diverting. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to pat him or make out with him. His baby face was all puffy with sleep and creased from the pillow and he was so goddamn cute. Well, his brain wanted to smoosh Finn’s cute cheeks; his dick was pretty convinced they should do other stuff, egged on by how stupidly sexy Finn’s just-woke-up voice was.

“I mean,” Finn said, “mine is too.”

Poe laughed. “Not surprising,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you want to do anything about it. It’s because your bladder’s full and it’s pressing on some thingy in there, I forget the anatomical name.”

“Oh,” Finn said, “I know. But like. Sometimes you _do_. And it’s just-- I feel like that would be weird.”

Poe blinked at the ceiling, then looked over at him, lost. “What?”

“If I just-- took care of things,” Finn said, and he was self-conscious now, and Poe was not awake enough for this.

“Wait,” Poe said, trying to catch up. “My things or your things, or-- what are we talking about?”

“Sex,” Finn said. “Masturbation. People here are funny about it and I haven’t figured it out. If I just decided to rub one out right here, where I’m from everyone else wouldn’t think that was weird, and if someone wanted, they might come over and join in, or not, and it wouldn’t be weird at all, but I haven’t seen anything at all like that around here and I feel like you all would think it was definitely weird.”

“Oh,” Poe said. He blinked, and rubbed his face. Keeping up with this kid was more than he could handle. “Yes. It would be weird. Generally you don’t do anything sexual where anyone can see or hear you except for someone who’s, uh, planning to join in. And even then, you don’t-- start anything unless you think they’re likely to join in.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Finn said. “That’s all I needed to know. Most manners you can kind of pick up but I thought, for sure you people _have_ to masturbate, but I don’t want to get that one wrong.”

“We do,” Poe said. “That one’s-- well, all the humans do, most of the others too I think, but uh, there’s a lot of variation.”

“Variation,” Finn said blankly.

“You know,” Poe said, a little lamely. “With, uh. The other species and all. Some of them have. You know. Other stuff going on.”

Finn shoved himself up further on his elbow to look at Poe for a moment. “I had not thought about that,” he said.

Poe covered his eyes with his hand. “There was a running joke,” he said, “back at the Academy, that my secondary specialty after piloting was inter-species sexual relations.”

“ _Really_ ,” Finn said, leaning closer into Poe’s space.

“I had, like, _one_ hookup with a Mon Calamari,” Poe said, trying not to react too avidly to Finn’s closeness and warmth and adorableness, “and _maybe_ I slept with a Corweillian once or twice, a gentleman never kisses and tells, and there may or may not have been a situation with an Ewok. There was also an incident with a Quarren that got way overblown in the retelling because she left suction cup marks on my neck that took over a week to fade, but we barely even-- we made out at a party, it wasn’t even— a thing. I mean, it was hot, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t anything serious. And, I mean, Keshians, but they hardly count, they’re basically humans. I was just a really friendly guy for a couple of years at the Academy, I made a lot of friends, I figured I was there to broaden my horizons and make connections. Anyway. _Anyway_. I happen to know a few things about a couple of our allied races, that’s all.”

Finn was staring at him, and Poe was determined not to blush. Most of it was much less risqué than it really sounded-- the Ewok situation especially had actually been pretty tame-- but it was such an oft-repeated bit of lore, Finn was bound to hear it somewhere, and Poe would rather be the one telling it. “That’s cool,” Finn said finally, sounding really sincere. “I’ve basically never even _met_ anybody who wasn’t human so you’ve got like, a huge leg-up on me.”

It was on the tip of Poe’s tongue to say something flip and flirty about getting something up on Finn-- but that wasn’t what Finn was here for, right. It was years since he’d really flirted like that. He laughed. “Well,” he said. “Any time you need advice, I’m kind of rusty but that used to be my thing.”

Finn laughed, and flopped back down next to him. “I mean,” he said. “Sex I get. It’s more formal here than I’m used to but I mean, I generally get how that works anyway.”

Poe had completely not thought about this at all. “Wait,” he said, a little off-balance. “Stormtroopers fuck?”

“Well,” Finn said, “yeah, we’ve established that troopers are human and humans have sexual appetites, generally, right? So yeah, of course we do.”

“That’s allowed?” Poe asked. “You don’t have-- families though?”

Finn regarded him suspiciously. “You don’t have sex with your family,” he said. “That’s like-- the _one thing_ I know.”

“I meant,” Poe said, and stopped, totally at sea. “Okay, though, but I mean, who _do_ you have sex with? Just-- everyone? Do you pair off? Just-- orgies all the time? I mean-- oh my god, the snuggle bench was for orgies?”

Finn laughed. “No, man! But like-- when you’re off-duty, if you feel the need, you find somebody else who feels the need, or a couple somebodies, and you take care of each other. Y’know? I mean. People seem to do that here too, if I’m reading anything right.”

“No, no,” Poe said, “no, that’s how it works here too.” He thought for a moment. “Sometimes Stormtroopers are women,” he said carefully, and stopped.

“Usually like-- one in ten,” Finn said. “Depends on the troop. Mine was real light on ‘em but it wasn’t typically like that. Why?”

“Does that-- matter?” Poe asked.

Finn sat up a little farther and looked at him, baffled. He actually blinked, he was so confused. “Does it?” he asked. “Is that a thing? Are you not supposed to--”

“Oh,” Poe said, and sat up, rubbing his face sleepily. “I mean--”

“No,” Finn said, sort of horrified, “is that a thing? Can you not have sex with women too? Is it like-- a taboo?”

“It makes babies,” Poe said gently. “It’s-- you have to be sort of-- careful, that’s all.”

Finn stared at him. “I _know_ ,” he said. “Wait, is that all? I know that, Poe, we’re not-- I was a Stormtrooper, not a-- I don’t know what kind of thing doesn’t know where babies come from but it’s a lot less well-educated than a Stormtrooper, okay? Like-- I _do_ know shit about the world, okay?” He actually seemed mad. Shit, shit, _shit_.

Poe grabbed Finn’s arms, right around the biceps, and held him, gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think that. I never thought that. I just-- I don’t know very much about where you come from. And if you didn’t have a family then there are things you might not know about families, okay? That’s all I was thinking. I don’t think you’re stupid and I don’t think you’re naive. I’m sorry, Finn, I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”

Finn stared at him, sort of dumbstruck, and Poe wasn’t sure if maybe he’d dialed the sincerity up too far or something, but he had meant it, and it was also dawn and he hadn’t slept all that well and his hair was so wildly disarranged, he could feel on top of his head, that it was possibly threatening to gain its own sentience. And if he’d really gotten rhyndo’d, it would have kicked in by now, Dr. Kalonia had checked him over twice and reassured him every time she saw him, in an uncharacteristic display of compassion-- but he couldn’t stop feeling the phantom burn of it, deeper than where the blaster-scald was still healing on his leg.

All of this meant that it was _really important_ that Finn wasn’t really mad at him right now. Finn’s expression shifted slightly, and for some reason Poe felt compelled to complete the gesture and pull him into an embrace.

“I get it,” Finn said softly, and put his hands on Poe’s back, palms flat and spreading his fingers out. He was warm, and his body was warm and solid, and Poe laid his head down on Finn’s shoulder and closed his eyes and didn’t try not to just hang on, since all that warmth and solidity was on offer. “It’s okay. I wasn’t really mad. You’re good about it. Other people are-- stupid, sometimes, or. They think I am.”

“I’m sorry,” Poe said, one more time for good measure. And just then the signal chimed, over by the door, the little transceiver in his desk lamp that picked up on the wake-up call beep for the shift changes.

“Oh,” Finn said, “that’s my wake-up call too,” and pulled away, getting out of bed and stretching. “Thanks for this, man, that’s the longest I’ve slept since I got here I think.”

“Anytime,” Poe said. “Hey. I’ll get you your own bed. I can make room, if it’d be easier.”

Finn blinked at him. “Maybe,” he said. He looked uncertainly around the tiny hut. It was really tiny, Poe conceded, but they all were. It’d be possible to cram another bed in against the far wall, though. “Your stuff, though. I don’t want to crowd you.”

“If it makes it so you can sleep,” Poe said, “I know it doesn’t take me long to get used to having a room--m-mate,” and as he said it, his breath started to give out, and he got the last word out normally enough, but he had to look away, pretending casualness.

Finn had caught on, though, and was silent as Poe dragged his fingers through his hair to try and work out the tangles. “I might,” Finn said quietly, “keep trying to learn to sleep on my own. I feel like-- I should. But if I. If I can’t, is it all right-- what we just did? Or is that-- is that too in your space?”

Poe considered it, grimacing at the awful tangle above his ear. “That’d be all right,” he said. “Let’s see how it goes, then.” He managed to pick the knot out, and then gave Finn his best, friendliest smile. He reached out and squeezed Finn’s shoulder. “Come when you need me, and we’ll play it by ear. Okay?”

“Okay,” Finn said, and his sweetness was goddamn blinding.

Poe thought to himself, _you might be in trouble_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started to update this early because I was in a towering snit over a browser extension update making Tumblr actually unusable for several days, but then I got into proofreading and like, actually really focused, and, uh, actually made a lot of really good changes to this chapter. So. It's extra-polished because I couldn't Internet as I wanted.  
> There's some kind of lesson there but I stubbornly refuse to learn it.  
> However, if you'd like to socialize here, I am very into having discussions in the comments, because this site isn't unusable without browser extensions. So there's that. Please do start a conversation, I'd love to expound / discuss things here since you can have threaded comments and all.  
> A suitable discussion topic might be just how many xenos/aliens Poe has actually hooked up with and what we all think of that, hm? I admit I spent a while looking through the sentient species list on Wookieepedia and thinking, hm, I don't know if I could actually figure out how to have sex with that, even if I _were_ a 19-year-old fighter pilot cadet with more pluck than common sense.
> 
> Also, *shamelessly rolls around in platonic bedsharing* In my anecdata, _nobody_ dislikes this trope. You just can't go wrong. I admit that this particular scene is The Reason This Novel Exists. It was the first thing I wrote and all I really wanted. Yesssssssss.


	4. If I Had Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe looked over at Pava, rolling his eyes. “Do you let your astromech watch you fuck?” he asked. “I feel like that would be really inappropriate, but is that hopelessly old-fashioned of me?”  
> “I do not let my astromech watch me fuck,” Pava agreed, making a horrified face. “That is not old-fashioned, that is just having healthy personal boundaries."
> 
> Perspectives, mending, makeouts, and friendly advice. Finn learns a lot of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [this performance](https://youtu.be/7M8m4LyFSkE) of Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song).

 

“Why just pilots at this meeting?” Snap Wexley asked.

“Starting there,” Poe said. “I don’t know how wide this goes. But we’re the ones getting the missions this has some bearing on.” He’d hauled all the pilots currently on-base into the conference room, since the command staff wasn’t using it right now.

“Is this about what Karé was talking about?” Arana asked. He was cleared for light duty, but he was still using crutches to walk and couldn’t sit long enough to fly anywhere distant. He was mostly working up briefings, and even that, it pained Poe to have him do. But they were desperate. So he was working. 

Poe stepped up to the table they were all sitting at, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the syringe. He set it down on the table. It was still capped, still full, and the pale yellow liquid in it still had a curl of red through it where Poe’s blood had gotten sucked back into the needle as Gantl died incredibly violently.

Poe owed Kun more than his life, for that quick save.

“What’s that?” Pava asked, leaning forward.

“Don’t touch it,” Wexley said, going pale. He’d been around a while, he knew what was up. Poe liked bush pilots because they were quick on the uptake, and Snap was the quickest of all of them. Poe nodded at him.

“Doc tested it,” Poe said. “It’s rhyndo, all right.”

Everyone recoiled from the table. Poe had his hands in his pockets so nobody could see how they were shaking. On his way here he’d stopped by the infirmary. For two days now, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from going in every time he went past, and having the doc test his eyes. He knew the danger was past. And he knew she had never really liked him much, had never had much patience for his showboating, but she never said a word, never dissuaded him, never tried to tell him he was being silly about this; she just tested his eyes, every time he came and stood in front of her and couldn’t make himself open his mouth. She knew.

“Why do you _have_ that?” Pava demanded, horrified.

“Yanked it out of my leg,” Poe said. Everyone went absolutely silent and stared at him. “Apparently there’s a bonus. The First Order has bounties on all of our heads, we knew that already. All the X-Wing pilots whose names they know, which is all the ones who went to the Academy, and then some.” He paused, breathed in, let his breath out slowly. “For me, at least, and I don’t know how many others, there’s a bonus. The bounty’s so much dead, more alive, and a bonus on top if you’re alive and rhyndo’d. I don’t know how many of us this affects. Me, for sure. The informant said no such bonus applied to Kun, but that’s as much as we got out of him.”

There was a long moment of silence. “What do we do?” Arana asked, quietly.

Poe shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t have an answer. But I wanted everyone to know.” He picked up the syringe and put it back into his pocket; he’d promised the doctor he’d return it immediately to her safe custody. Nobody wanted it lying around. “Take this information into account,” he said, “as you consider what missions you’re willing to take on, and as you make decisions about your personal safety on those missions. We’ll talk it over in the future. I still haven’t told the command staff. I thought you all should know first.” He couldn’t bear to put his hand back into the same pocket as the syringe, so he pushed his hair back instead.

“Did it-- affect you?” Pava asked, nearly whispering.

“Doc says we’d know by now,” Poe said, rubbing his hand down the back of his neck so its shaking wouldn’t show. “So I guess not.”

“Who did it?” Wexley asked. “Who’d even have that stuff?”

Poe gestured to Kun, who grimaced, swallowed hard, and said, “Uxonia Gantl.”

There was a collective murmur. “New Republican Naval Academy alum,” Poe said. “Current, uniformed, active service lieutenant.” Rhyndo was the kind of thing out of old stories, something officially deplored by everything the New Republic stood for, and yet, there it was.

“Needless to say,” Kun said, voice shaky, “she did not want to join the Resistance.”

Voice rose unsteadily in response to that, and Poe turned and left the room, left them to it.

 

General Organa was in her office, as he’d expected. “Dameron,” she said, and frowned, looking at his face. “You look like something’s wrong. Why don’t you ever come to me with boring problems?”

He ought to laugh, but he couldn’t dredge one up, so he nodded instead. “Would’ve been nice to have a cushy career mostly flying a desk,” he said. “But I’d’ve been bored, General.”

“I yearn for the days of being bored,” the General said. She sat up a little. “What is it?”

He knew he was transparent to her, he shouldn’t have been surprised. She was pretty Force-sensitive; he half-assumed she could read his mind more often than not. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the syringe, and laid it carefully on her desk. “Found this,” he said.

“Where’d you find it?” she asked, leaning forward to peer more closely at it.

“Stuck into my thigh by Uxonia Gantl in a bid to bring me in for the bounty on my head,” Poe said. “Kun’s quick reflexes saved me, she needs a promotion.”

Organa considered that, and finally raised her eyes to him. “I assume it’s not a sedative,” she said. “I feel like you wouldn’t feel the need to report that directly to me.”

“No,” Poe said, and couldn’t even muster a smile at that. “Rhyndo.”

Her face went utterly still, and then her head tilted just the tiniest bit. “How long ago,” she said.

“Doc says I must not’ve got enough to affect me,” he said. “It’s been a couple days, General, we’d know.”

“You didn’t report it right away,” the General said, frowning.

“No,” Poe said. “Not to-- just to the doc. I wanted to know, first.” He crossed his arms across his chest, and looked away, a little ashamed. “It was-- maybe selfish, but I couldn’t take the suspense as it was, I couldn’t imagine having it reflected back at me too, on top of that.”

“Fair,” Organa said.

“I told the pilots,” Poe said, “just now. It’s-- apparently the First Order has bounties, but there are bonuses, at least for some of us, if the bounty hunters bring us in alive and rhyndo’d.” He had to unclasp his arms and rub his palms down the sides of his hips to dry them off, they were going so clammy.

“I see,” Organa said. “Thank you for telling me.” She stood then, and came around the desk, and took his hands in hers and stared up at him. “If that bounty goes much higher for you, I don’t want you doing the recruitment missions anymore. It’s counterproductive.”

Part of him wanted to jump at the chance to never go back out there again, but he knew he couldn’t. He shook his head. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “I’m still doing more good than harm.”

“It’s not about protecting you,” Organa said, “it’s about the price on your head tempting people who otherwise wouldn’t involve themselves.”

He nodded. “I understand,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes. “You said _some of us_ ,” she said. “Which pilots do we know have bonuses on them?”

He hesitated. “I’m the only one we know of for sure,” he said.

“You don’t suppose it’s because someone picked up on your particular horror of that fate during a Force interrogation,” Organa said.

It was like a heavy rock crashing downward through his ribcage and landing with a percussive thump in his gut, and he blinked and stared at her, at a loss. Ben had her eyes; he remembered observing that as a child, remembered-- he couldn’t think about Ben Organa now, not now, the mind recoiled from it. After a moment, he realized his mouth was open, and shut it. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t even-- know how to know that.”

“We’ll have to assume the worst,” Organa said, “and that’s that they’re doing this for more of the pilots than just you.” She squeezed his hands.

“That’s what I figured,” he said. _How did you know about my particular horror_ , he almost asked, but that was more emotional honesty than he was willing to enter into just now.

The Organa-Solo family had visited Yavin 4 intermittently, but they hadn’t been around much after his mom had died. Kes blamed Leia for Shara’s death even though she hadn’t been involved, and Poe had fought with him over it once he was old enough so much it seemed like sheer reflex at this point. But the whole incident with the guitar teacher had been later. He hadn’t figured Organa had known about it. But it was the kind of thing she might have found out. She always, always had good intelligence, about everything.

She let go of his hands, and put her hands around his biceps instead, squeezing him and staring intently up at him. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, Poe,” she said.

It was a very un-General-like thing to say, and he just stared at her for a moment. “You’d survive,” he said softly, and not at all bitterly. “Like you always do.” He shook his head slightly. “You’d keep doing the right thing. Like you always do.” He smiled, a little, at that. It was kind of reassuring, after all. At least to him. This was the kind of job where you had to have your affairs in order, and this sort of thing counted.

She was holding his arms very hard indeed now, and staring up at him with a peculiar intensity. “I would _try_ , Poe,” she said, “That’s what I always do.”

He let his smile go crooked. “You can always find another pilot,” he said. “We’re overpriced but widely available.”

“Don’t even joke,” she said. “I need you, Poe. _You_. All right?”

The smile slipped away. “All right,” he said, taken aback by her intensity. “Okay.”

She pulled him down, put her hands around his neck, and kissed his cheeks, like she hadn’t since he was a child. Well. They were alone here, now.

“Your mother would be so proud of you, Poe,” she said, in Iberican.

It startled a laugh out of him, because it was that or cry. His brain had caught up: Leia Organa was a human woman, after all, and everyone she loved had abandoned her, either in death or worse. He was all she had left. This was an uncharacteristically emotional moment for her, but no less genuine for that.

“You know,” he said softly, “I think she’d be proud of you, too, for whatever that’s worth.”

It wasn’t easy to surprise Leia Organa, but that did. She stared at him, eyes a little bit wide, for a long moment, before pulling him in and embracing him.

______

______

 

It was Berel, Mowa’s friend, who first kissed Finn, out behind the storage shed while he was helping her carry in cans of preserved food for the mess hall. She pretended to stumble, transparently false, but he caught her anyway, and she tipped her head up and pressed her mouth against his, and he was so surprised he almost dropped her. She giggled, at that, and said, “Did they not teach you that in the First Order?”

 _Not on duty_ , he almost said, but that wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “Well,” he said, looking down at her and pretty easily guessing what the right thing to say was, “I feel like I didn’t get much practice at it.”

At that, she kissed him for a long time, until he was so turned-on he couldn’t see straight, and then said, “Oh, they’ll wonder what’s taking us so long,” and giggled instead of being afraid.

“That’s,” he said, “unsurprising,” and was grateful for the tunic that meant his body’s response to all that warm mouth was less obvious. He hauled cans twice as fast to make up for it, and nobody noticed their tardiness. He got the feeling, though, that even if they had noticed, they wouldn’t have cared. There weren’t timetables here. He knew that and still got jumpy anyway.

Later, he noticed her watching him in the mess hall, but Poe came in and he got distracted talking to him, and it was only later when she caught his eye and gave him the thumbs-up as she was leaving that he realized she’d probably been hoping to pick up where they’d left off.

And from her gesture, she assumed he was doing it with Poe instead, and that made him wonder if she thought Poe wanted him to. Poe wasn’t giving him any particular clues, but he seemed so glad to see him every time they met, and had told him to come into his hut anytime without knocking.

Maybe Poe just wasn’t the kind of person who did a lot of kissing and… stuff. But that wasn’t true; Poe himself had told the stories of how he’d gotten his reputation, all the different kinds of people of different species he’d been with, how friendly he’d been. Finn couldn’t stop thinking about that holopic of him with the bottle. What would it be like, he thought, and couldn’t even make himself finish the thought. Not while Poe was sitting at the table next to him, nodding his head thoughtfully as he listened to the story Snap Wexley was telling. He didn’t look like the boy in the holopic anymore, the red mouth and promising eyes, but he was still striking-- such mobile features, curling mouth and nimble eyebrows, and above all a razor wit that never missed a connection. He drew attention, made you want to be near him, made you want him to notice you; every time he looked at Finn, it made Finn feel more important. And the memory of his body pressed against Finn’s, even in sleep—

Poe noticed his regard. “You disagree?” he asked.

Finn blinked. “Oh,” he said, “sorry, I was thinking of something else.” He looked apologetically at Snap, who he quite liked and whose stories were generally entertaining. “I’m so sorry, I’m half-asleep, it’s not you at all.”

“I don’t take it personally when people zone out on me,” Snap said. “Now you mention it, though, it is pretty late. I should hit the hay. Good night, gentlemen.”

“Genius idea,” Poe said, and yawned. “‘Night, Wexley.”

“I’m with you,” Finn said.

Poe smiled warmly at him, and held out his hand to help Finn up. “You wanna bunk with me again?” he asked. “Or was I too obnoxious?”

Finn couldn’t help but laugh, at that. Obnoxious? “Hell no, man,” he said. “I wasn’t lying, that’s the best sleep I’d had since they stopped sedating me.”

Poe let go of his hand once he’d pulled Finn to his feet, but put his hand in the middle of Finn’s back as they made their way out of the hall. It was reasonable, friendly body language given the close quarters among the labyrinth of chairs and tables, but Finn knew he wasn’t imagining the look of sheer jealousy the woman by the door gave him as they passed. No, people definitely thought he and Poe were fucking. He wasn’t misunderstanding that.

The lamplight in the little hut was soft and yellow, and Poe was so beautiful in it, humming to himself as he brushed his teeth shirtless, puttering around with no shoes on. He leaned out the door to spit in the bushes, and the moonlight was silver and the lamplight was gold, and the two colors chased each other across Poe’s smooth cream-gold skin, hiding in each other’s shadows. Finn sat at the desk with his brand new Resistance-issue toothbrush (a significantly different design than the ones he’d always used, wasn’t that a weird thing to consider) in his mouth like a dummy and stared at him.

 _I’d fly away,_ Poe sang absently, _to the one I love_ , in the tune he’d been humming. He rinsed and leaned out the door to spit again, and to dump more water over his toothbrush.

Was that it? Was there someone? Finn wasn’t sure how that worked. All the love songs seemed predicated on only ever loving one person. But that wasn’t really how people seemed to operate around here.

“The deluxe sanitary facilities are all yours,” Poe said, gesturing to the water pitcher and the open door, and laughed. Finn smiled helplessly at him, and finished brushing his teeth with the tiny soft toothbrush, and rinsed and spit and put his toothbrush next to Poe’s.

He took his shirt off too, since he wanted to wear it again and it would only get sweaty if he wore it overnight, and Poe was watching him with a strange expression that he couldn’t parse. But he climbed into bed and Poe switched the lamp off, then got in and lay with his back to Finn, and Finn considered it a moment before sliding his arm around Poe’s waist.

Poe yawned and stretched, lithe and inviting in Finn’s arms, but curled up and went still. Finn stuck his face in the back of Poe’s neck (he smelled like home already, somehow) and zonked out.

 

And woke to Poe flailing in panic. He’d pulled the curtain shut at some point, so it was warm and close and very, very dark, but Finn instantly remembered where he was, and grabbed Poe’s hands to stop him from hitting things any more. “Hey,” Finn said, “hey, hey-- Poe, hey.”

Poe made a strangled, terrified noise, but was clearly having some kind of panic attack or night terror, because no threat manifested and his movements didn’t get any more purposeful. “Nng,” Poe said, “no, no me hagas esthngh!”

“Hey,” Finn said, wrapping Poe in his arms, holding his arms down, stopping his struggling. He’d been taught how to restrain someone, and to do it effectively and without hurting them or yourself, it was best to confine their limbs. “Hey, shh, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m right here.”

Poe subsided, breathing hard, and in the faint glimmer of light that was coming through the curtains Finn could see that his eyes were wide open and unseeing.

“Shh,” Finn murmured, “hey, shh, shush, it’s okay, baby, shh.”

“Finn,” Poe said finally, some of the vibrating tension going out of his body.

“Yeah,” Finn said, “it’s me, it’s me.”

Poe’s whole body shuddered. “Do you promise?” he asked. “Me lo prometes?”

What? “Sure,” Finn said, “Poe, I promise.”

Poe shivered again, and the rest of the tension sighed out of him. “Okay,” he said, and after a moment Finn realized he was actually asleep.

 

“How’d you sleep?” Poe asked, tipping his head back to pull a razor up his jaw. He shaved his neck every day, but didn’t shave his face quite every day, and Finn didn’t have enough data to figure out the schedule yet. He had no doubt it was a schedule.

“Pretty well,” Finn said. “You?”

“Man I slept like I was dead,” Poe said. “I don’t even know if I moved the whole night. I feel amazing today, I tell you what.”

“Really?” Finn asked.

“Yeah,” Poe said, and rinsed the razor off, tapping it on the side of the basin. He rinsed his face and toweled it off, checking in the mirror to see if he’d missed any spots. He turned and looked at Finn. “Why, did I kick you a lot?”

“No,” Finn said, “not at all.”

 

Mowa and Berel together asked him how it had gone with Poe. Finn had no idea what a polite answer was, but their avid expressions disquieted him. “I, he’s nice,” Finn said, at a loss. “I like him a lot.”

“Does he _satisfy_ you, though,” Berel asked, elbowing Mowa for some reason.

“From what I’ve heard of his prowess,” Mowa said, “surely he must.”

Finn just stared at them. “He doesn’t want to gossip,” Berel said after a moment.

“A gentleman never kisses and tells,” Mowa pointed out.

“Ah but will our curiosity never be sated?” Berel demanded. “I know _this_ one is a good kisser!” That made Finn’s cheeks get a little hot, thinking about that. They were assuming he’d had sex with Poe, since apparently it was common knowledge now that he was sleeping there. How, he didn’t know. Should he have been stealthier about it, less obvious? But the fact that he was sleeping in Poe’s bed but not having sex with him didn’t seem to be normal for these people either.

“I don’t know how to have this conversation,” he said, giving up on bluffing his way out of this one. He’d learned that it was okay to admit that sort of thing, sometimes, now. He wasn’t pretending to be anything he wasn’t, it was okay if he let on sometimes.

Both of them seemed to be somehow moved by that admission. “Well,” Berel said, “if you’re not exclusive with him, I wouldn’t at all mind picking up where we left off, sometime.”

Finn had no idea what _exclusive with him_ could possibly mean.

 

 

He listened to a lot of conversations about a lot of things, and gathered gradual information about how to express varying levels of friendship. Friends take care of each other, he learned, so he brought Poe’s laundry along with his when he came to use the machines again. Nobody knew, because half of his clothing was Poe’s anyway so it was impossible for anyone else to tell the difference. Except one pair of trousers, which had clearly gotten damaged in whatever incident had made Poe walk with a slight limp. Mowa inspected them critically: there was a big singe mark and damaged fabric, and a bloodstain.

“Looks like he just missed a blaster bolt here,” they said, alarmed.

“Can something like that be fixed?” Finn asked, because he’d surmised that and didn’t want to ask and also really wanted to interrogate Poe at great length and in great detail and maybe take measures to protect him from that kind of thing in future. But he knew that was inappropriate. Poe lived a dangerous life. It wasn’t Finn’s business. If Poe wanted Finn to know, he’d tell him.

“It can,” Mowa said. “You have to sew on a patch of something else. I actually think I have some of this same fabric. This is a good example, it was a great idea to bring this to me. I can teach you a bunch of techniques here.”

It took a couple of days of intermittent work, but Finn did most of it himself once Mowa showed him how, and in the end, he repaired them so skillfully you could hardly tell. Then he felt self-conscious, since Poe hadn’t asked him to do that. But he knew for a fact that Poe didn’t have very many pairs of trousers, so he folded them up and put them back into the drawer in Poe’s hut one of the times he was there, and sure enough, a couple days later Poe was wearing them.

He didn’t seem to realize that anything had happened, but Finn figured that was much better than him noticing and thinking it was a really weird thing for Finn to have done.

 

_______

_______

 

Finn didn’t come by every night. Sometimes he came late in the night. At first he would scratch hesitantly at the door, but after a couple of times of this, Poe told him to just come in. Poe was never doing anything private anyway. And so sometimes Poe woke muzzily to the warm familiar scent and weight of Finn climbing over him, or curling around him, and sometimes he just fell asleep alone and woke up not alone.

And he got used to it.

It wasn’t every night. Their schedules swung wildly; Poe was frequently away. They took in a whole bunch of refugees and some of them were pilots and Poe had to see to them. They had enough recruits that they had to start up a separate base, and Poe spent a lot of time helping organize, and piloting shuttles and things, which was boring but any time flying was good, he kept trying to tell himself.

One time Poe came back to his hut and Finn was asleep in his bed, out like a light, and it was so sweet Poe just sat and watched him sleep for a while, until he had the energy to take his boots and flight suit off and get into bed.

Another time Poe came to bed to find that Finn had certainly been and gone. It made him sorry to have missed him, but something about the scent of Finn’s skin in his bedding was so comforting.

Poe was getting really used to him, and it was starting to become a little bit of a problem. Platonic was fine, it was good, it was safe and in every way better than sexual, but sometimes Poe’s body got a little confused, and he had to give himself some stern talking-tos. He had reason to be grateful that there were doors on the ‘freshers. It was a mixed thing; on the one hand, he was kind of glad to know that he wasn’t actually so old all of a sudden that he didn’t feel things anymore, but on the other hand, he felt like he was at a point in his life where he shouldn’t be jerking off in communal showers. His body very much wanted him to escalate sleeping next to Finn to fucking, and his beat-up and broken old heart was starting to think like maybe it knew better than his head, like maybe it could wrap itself around somebody again, but his head was not yet tired of reminding him just how bad an idea it was to entangle oneself with someone no matter how bright and beautiful and sweet and perfect.

Love was great, but the thing about love was that it went away. Love was always conditional, and eventually you couldn’t meet the conditions anymore, and then everything fell to ruin. In the immediate aftermath, it was hard to remember why you’d ever been so foolish as to indulge in it. But as loneliness stretched on and you still weren’t dead, it was harder and harder to stick to those bitter resolutions to never set yourself up to get hurt again.

And Poe was pretty sure that he’d taken enough damage that another heartbreak like that would be the end of him somehow. He couldn’t imagine living through something like that again. He just couldn’t imagine it.

Fortunately Finn, while affectionate and possibly at least shallowly interested, made no moves, and Poe could keep himself under control.

Although it was difficult when Poe caught on that Finn had been doing his laundry. He was in his hut on a quiet night, late but not stupid-late, and for once his hands weren’t shaky with stimulant letdown, so it struck him that he could do his mending. He fished around in the laundry/mending basket and found that it was empty. Staring down into it, he had the separate realization that he hadn’t visited the laundry facilities in a while and also somehow hadn’t run out of socks. In his defense, on many bases there was a service that took care of that sort of thing for you, so he had intermittently been accustomed to his socks magically replenishing themselves.

But there wasn’t anything like that here.

He tried to remember what had been in that mending basket. A shirt missing buttons, another shirt with a right-angle tear where he’d snagged it on a rivet head, and— oh yeah, the trousers Kun had caught with the blaster, saving him from rhyndo.

He was wearing those trousers now, he realized suddenly. And he was standing there in the middle of his hut staring down at the beautifully-worked patch on his thigh that extended from the pocket seam across the entire expanse of formerly blaster-damaged fabric, when Finn came in.

“Hey,” Finn said. “I figured you’d be asleep already.”

“I was going to do my mending,” Poe said. “But either I have a magical laundry basket, or— did _you_ fix these?”

Finn looked embarrassed, and so adorable Poe really wanted to kiss him and maybe take all his clothes off him. “Yeah,” he said. “I, uh. We never learned to do that stuff, in the Order, and I thought— I figured you wouldn’t mind if I got Mowa to teach me how.”

“Mind,” Poe said. “You’re— I would never have done so good a job. I didn’t— I didn’t even _notice_. How long ago did you do it?” It must have been a few days. He’d worn these trousers more than once already. “Have you been doing my laundry too?”

“I hope that’s not weird,” Finn said, “but that’s another thing I didn’t know how to do so I just— wanted to practice.”

“You’re too much,” Poe said faintly. It wasn’t even how pretty Finn was, how bright his eyes were, how broad his shoulders were— it wasn’t any of that. It was that nobody had taken care of Poe like that in longer than he could remember. And that was the kind of thing that could destroy you. Sexual desire, romantic love, that sort of thing was complicated enough, but feeling like you belonged, like you were important to someone— that was the kind of thing that ensnared not just the heart but the soul.

“Sorry,” Finn said, grimacing.

“No no no,” Poe said, and grabbed him and pulled him into an embrace. “Don’t change. Never change. You’re perfect. You’re amazing. I just don’t know what I’ve possibly done to deserve a friend like you.”

Finn laughed, that sweet easy laugh, and put his arms around Poe like he belonged here and nowhere else, and held onto Poe in that easy way of his, where he wasn’t trying to be tough and wasn’t trying anything, he just was. “You’ve done plenty, Poe Dameron.”

 

 

BB-8 caught on sometime around then. Ey didn’t come out to Poe’s hut much, there wasn’t reason for it-- and ey was nosy as anything and liked to be where Poe was, but the path was bumpy and most crucially, there was no power out in the huts. You could only have stuff that could be powered off the little power packs, and BB-8 needed way too much juice for that. Ey didn’t need to recharge every night, but it was just easier for em to stay in the main hangar, and ready access to power ports. It made em mouthier, though, to spend so much time with other droids.

Poe wasn’t sure what tipped BB-8 off to his new sleeping arrangements, but suddenly one day ey rolled up and bumped his leg and chirped, “You’re getting better recharges.”

“What,” Poe said.  

BB-8 repeated emself, slower, like the problem was Poe’s hearing and not that what ey had said made no sense.

“BB,” Poe said, but obliged by kneeling down to get on eir level. “Oh. I’m sleeping better?”

BB-8 whistled an affirmative, then beeped coyly, “Your bed is warmer?”

“It’s not like that,” Poe said. This sort of discussion had happened before. BB had a somewhat confused notion of what sex actually entailed and how it worked and what the actual process was. Eir notion wasn’t entirely wrong, but it wasn’t… scientific either. “We don’t recharge by absorbing each other’s thermal energy.”

“But beds are always warm,” BB-8 reasoned.

“Humans are warm,” Poe said. “That’s just-- we have to maintain a really specific operating temperature, that’s just a--” He gave up. They’d had many many discussions about this and he knew BB had a reasonable data set on all of this, and that ey was mostly trolling him at this point, but he kept getting sucked into the debate anyway. Frivolous debates with Poe were sort of BB-8’s main pleasure in life, and Poe wasn’t in the habit of denying em.

“Also you put things in each other’s ports,” BB-8 observed slyly. “You have not put your extensions in anybody’s ports in a long time and you used to like to do it so much.”

Poe covered his face with his hands, and let himself turn and collapse with his back against the wall. He’d been with BB-8 for a very long time, and the astro had possibly retained more information about his love life than was strictly a good idea. “Beep,” he said, “that’s an objectively hideous thing to say.”

“You used to like it!” BB said insistently, bumping his hip. “You have been operating suboptimally without this kind of recharge!”

“It’s not a recharge,” Poe said. “We’ve been over this, I know you know better.”

“Upgrade,” BB tried. “Enhancement. Recreation?”

“And I have _so_ been operating optimally,” Poe informed it haughtily. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

BB-8 subsided a little, and beeped more sadly, “Insufficient vocabulary.”

Poe put his arm around BB, and pulled em in against his side. “You’re fine, Little Beep,” he said. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Pava asked, pausing as she walked by.

Poe raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t I look fine?”

“He does not engage in enough sexual relations,” BB-8 said, indignation swelling to full force now that ey had an audience.

“BB!” Poe said, horrified, and covered his face with his hands. He peeked out between his fingers. Pava was looking tremendously amused. It _would_ be Pava who overheard this; she was responsible for a lot of the Academy-era rumors about him making the transition to the Resistance, since she’d been a recent graduate when she’d defected, and had repeated all the Academy lore about Poe’s apparently legendary (and much expanded in the retelling) exploits, so that everyone here knew every single embarrassing and embroidered story. He’d had a frank discussion with her about it pretty early on, and she’d been appropriately chastened, but the damage had been done. And she wasn’t so chastened that she didn’t still make occasional jokes about the inter-species sexual relations concentration of studies. “I feel like my astromech telling me to get laid is a bad sign.”

“Oh ho,” Pava said, “mine sure doesn’t give me advice like that.” She sat down on her heels in front of them. “Maybe because I have a healthy sex life.” Her astro was actually a pretty beat-up old secondhand R2 unit that Poe privately worried wasn’t really adequate for her level of flying, but there was no way he’d be able to get her a better one with their chronic materiel shortages, so he tried not to think about it and she never mentioned it. She was a good egg, and a great pilot, and had a quick wit in briefings, but she was also the youngest pilot so he tried not to let himself fuss over her too much lest he piss her off with mother-henning. And he absolutely did not pay any attention to her sex life beyond that she seemed reasonably happy and not too distracted. She had a casual thing with Karé that he kept half an eye on because he was worried Karé might be a little bit of an asshole sometimes, but they seemed all right.

“Humans and similar biological creatures put their extensions in one another’s ports,” BB-8 said, earnest and sage at the same time. “This gives them some kind of recharge. There is not much documentation on this topic, but endless discussion of the extensions and the ports in our source materials.”

Pava laughed so hard she overbalanced and sat down. “BB,” she said, “you are absolutely right. Though. The extensions are optional.”

“The _ports_ are optional,” Poe pointed out, then decided he was overthinking this. “ _All of it_ ’s optional.”

“We have all been comparing notes on this,” BB-8 said, “and we cannot come to an agreement on precisely what capacity becomes recharged by these encounters.”

“I knew leaving you in the hangar overnights was a terrible idea,” Poe said, because so was every other pilot with an astromech, since nobody had recharge ports, and droids left alone together in groups for extended regular periods without much supervision led to the rise of strange modes and vogues and ideas with odd traction. BB-8’s unusual learning AI was a little better-suited to handle that sort of thing, but even ey wasn’t completely immune to the cumulative effect of several droids all making the same erroneous conclusion at once and reinforcing one another.

“We have upgraded our databanks with additional information but it remains unclear,” BB-8 said, and projected a little hologram of--

“BB!” Poe said, scandalized. “Where did you guys get _porn_?”

“Where _didn’t_ they get it,” Pava said, tilting her head to get a better view of the hologram.

“Stop that,” Poe said, “that’s in poor taste. You can’t get real information from porn, it’s fictional, we’ve been over fiction, I know you know what it is.”

“Fictional,” BB-8 said, astonished. “This is fictional?” Ey sounded indignant, like perhaps ey felt ey’d been lied to.

“Nobody really fucks like that,” Poe said. The hologram was a little low-resolution and blurry but was plausibly a humanoid male and female, maybe, and they were energetically, if blurrily, fucking some kind of protuberance into some orifice, in one of those really uncomfortable-looking poses you only saw in porn and nobody ever did in real life, with the orifice-haver’s leg up on the protuberance-wielder’s chest, and everybody’s back arched everywhere to show off as much genital action as possible, and it generally looked very impractical but, well, visually informative, if it weren’t so badly-compressed and blurry as to render it moot.

“I wouldn’t know,” BB said a little accusingly, “you never let me watch and anyway, you never _do_ it, which is the entire point of this discussion. Clearly biologicals would not be so obsessed with this thing if it was not necessary?”

The hologram did the big messy pull-out-and-ejaculate-everywhere finish that had been pretty fashionable in porn holos for a while a decade or so ago, even ones with real actors-- enormous quantities of computer-generated emissions coating the receiving partner and more or less filling the screen-- and Poe grimaced in heartfelt disgust. “Could you turn that off please?”

“Ew,” Pava said, which said a lot about her past porn-watching experience; well, she was close to a decade Poe’s junior, and the fashion had changed, so this probably wasn’t the sort of thing she’d watched in her adolescence. Not that Poe watched a lot of porn holos, of course, but one didn’t hang out with a whole bunch of pilots and not remain approximately conversant with current porn fashions.

(Actually he really didn’t. He just hadn’t been very interested. In a long time. BB might have a point. He’d rather die than admit it.)

BB-8 turned the holo off. “Necessary,” ey insisted.

“No,” Poe said, “it’s really not. Some people don’t even like it at all.”

“You do though!” BB-8 insisted.

Poe looked over at Pava, rolling his eyes. “Do you let your astromech watch you fuck?” he asked. “I feel like that would be really inappropriate, but is that hopelessly old-fashioned of me?”

“I do not let my astromech watch me fuck,” Pava agreed, making a horrified face. “That is not old-fashioned, that is just having healthy personal boundaries. But BB’s right, if you’re a person who likes sex, it’s good to have it.”

“I am never going to hear the end of this,” Poe realized, looking at the curling corner of Pava’s mouth.

“Nope,” she said, popping the P, and got up.

“Jacket Thief would likely let you put your extensions in his ports,” BB-8 said to Poe, very earnest now.

“I don’t know who that is but it sounds like a great idea,” Pava said.

BB-8 refused to use any other name besides Jacket Thief for Finn. Poe covered his eyes with his hand. “I do not think Jacket Thief wants my extensions in his ports.”

“Everyone wants your extensions in their ports,” Pava said. “That’s like. A universal truth of the Resistance. Everyone wants Poe Dameron to put his extensions in their ports.”

“I am _never_ going to hear the end of this,” Poe said, haunted.

“Nope!” Pava said cheerfully, and walked away.

“Maybe I want Jacket Thief’s extensions in _my_ ports,” Poe said, once she was out of earshot, mostly to be a troll. BB-8 squeaked in excitement at that, rolling back a little. Poe was kidding, but now that he thought about it, he kind of _did_ want that. It was a really long time since he’d been with a man. _No_ , he told himself.

“He will _certainly_ put his extensions in your ports,” ey said, fervent. “If you desire that it is _certain_ that he would.”

“I don’t think so,” Poe said. “You forget, I’m an old man now, Beep. I used to be the dashing young hero but all that is behind me now. The reflexes go, and you’re done, and it’s time for a new generation of dashing young heroes to step in.”

“You are chronologically not even of middling age,” BB-8 said, astonished. “The average lifespan for creatures of your type given normal wear and tear is well in excess of 80 years and you have not yet attained forty!”

“The likelihood I’ll die of natural causes is vanishingly small, BB, you know that. Do the math,” Poe said.

“The average age of a pilot in the Resistance is--”

“--wildly skewed by how many non-human pilots we have,” Poe said. “I can do math too, BB. Humans get too slow when they get old. And sometimes your luck runs out, it’s statistics. Anyway, he’s 23 and shiny, Beep, I’m too old for him. Give it up with the ports, let me age gracefully for a change.” He pushed to his feet, and BB-8 gave a confused little trill of beeps that generally meant that ey was going to bring this up again once ey had marshaled eir thoughts for a new onslaught. Almost guaranteed it’d be at the worst possible time.

The only thing that kept Poe from dreading this was his secure knowledge that Finn didn’t understand droidspeak _at all_.

 

_______

_______

 

Arana was still on crutches. He was cleared to fly, but one of his legs still hadn’t finished healing fully, not enough to walk unassisted. Finn saw him in the mess hall holding a bowl and instantly realized that the guy couldn’t carry a tray, and rushed over to help him. “Don’t make five trips,” he said, “let me get you a drink. Did you want some of the bread?”

Arana laughed. “Thanks, man, sure,” and in no time, Finn had him set up at a table with one each of the things the mess hall was offering, all on separate plates, and a glass of water and a glass of the slightly-fizzy fermented thing they’d told Finn was supposed to be healthy and a glass of the weird blue milk everyone else thought was normal, and a separate stool for him to put his foot up on.

When he was set up, Finn went back and got the bowl of stew he’d come in for himself, and sat down next to him. “Oh!” he said, as soon as he sat down, “did you want--”

“No,” Arana said, laughing, and reached out to grab his arm. “Sit. It’s fine. Thank you.”

Finn looked at him. “Okay,” he said.

“Kun and Pava are meeting me here,” Arana said, “I was going to make them run around and fetch me stuff. But I guess I see why Poe’s so fond of you. You know you don’t have to work that hard to make yourself agreeable, we’d all already like you just because he does.”

“Poe’s fond of me?” Finn knew that, academically; clearly, nobody else was sleeping in Poe’s bed with him. But it still made him warm to hear it said. And then it made him nervous, because surely Poe could get in trouble for having favorites, especially if he was being so obvious about it.

Arana just looked at him, and it was only at these close quarters that Finn suddenly noticed that something was very odd about his eyes. In the infirmary’s dim lighting, he’d never noticed, but Arana’s eyes were a little too big, a little too bright, and the pupils weren’t quite-- right, somehow, in their shape or depth or something.

Arana wasn’t human. Finn was getting better about not reacting to stuff like that, though.

“Listen,” Arana said, “I’ve known Dameron a really long time, okay?”

“Have you?” Finn asked.

Arana nodded. “We were stationed together a few times back in the Fleet,” he said. “And I was a year behind him at the Academy, and we had a lot of classes together. We were roommates the last year he was there. I’ve known him longer than anybody else here.”

“Except General Organa,” Finn said, and then had a moment’s doubt. “Unless-- how old are you when you go to the Academy?” They’d told him, but he wasn’t sure he could really believe it.

Arana laughed. “Right,” he said. “Usually, like fourteen, fifteen. He was sixteen when I met him.”

“So,” Finn said. “Sixteen years ago.” He tilted his head. It did not escape him that Arana had not mentioned his own age. He was a xeno, so it stood to reason he’d matured faster or slower, and so was either much older or younger than he looked to a human. “I’d been with my same squad for about fifteen years, as a Stormtrooper, but we start being cadets younger than you guys.” He suddenly realized that he didn’t have to work out all the math. This wasn’t a competition. The number of years probably hadn’t been Arana’s point in initiating the conversation. “Uh. Right. You had, uh-- something you were going to say.”

It would be rude, Finn thought, to pay too much attention to Arana’s quite frankly slightly-eerie eyes, and to ascribe to them some ability to see through him and know things a standard human couldn’t, but he couldn’t help thinking Arana was in fact looking right through him.Arana had known Poe as long as Finn had known his squad, and Poe had shot Slip and had probably blown Zeroes up, and it was going to come out of Finn’s mouth all on his own if he never told anybody that. Fuck. It was like that little fact lived right behind Finn’s teeth and no matter how he tried to bury it, it kept wanting to come out.

Nobody here would care. Slip had been a Stormtrooper, and not a very good one, and Zeroes had probably been actively shooting at Poe. Finn had already caught on that most people here didn’t have great respect for Stormtroopers. He was looking forward to getting on a shooting range with all of them, because he knew he was an objectively good shot. If people gambled here, and he was sure that had to be universal, he’d clean up.

Poe would care about Slip, though. Poe would be upset. Because he understood.

 

“I like you,” Arana said, smiling faintly. “You’re quick.”

“At putting my foot in my mouth,” Finn said. “Without the damn helmet it’s like my mouth runs away.”

“You and Pava should be friends,” Arana said. “She’s got a rare talent for saying exactly the wrong thing. You can give each other pointers.” He reached over and patted Finn’s arm. “That’s not true, she’s a delight and you’re very smart. You’ve got a steep learning curve but you’ll know more than any of us do about what we do in no time.”

“I look forward to that,” Finn said sincerely.

“So,” Arana said, “I’m Poe’s oldest friend, if you take into account the fact that the General’s not really his peer and as such her relationship with him isn’t really the same as being his friend. And you’re Poe’s newest friend, and I like you. So I thought I’d ask if you have any questions about Poe that maybe I could answer, since he’s kind of hard to figure out.”

“Is he?” Finn asked. “It’s not just me? I don’t know what the hell he’s thinking most of the time.”

Arana smiled. He was a reasonably attractive fellow, dark-haired and with a wide, generous mouth that gave him an easygoing look. He’d mostly been quiet in the infirmary, lying next to Finn as they both recuperated, but Finn himself had been pretty quiet, mostly sedated, so that didn’t indicate much. “The thing about Poe is that he has a great deal of surface flash, and outward displays of showy, relatable emotions, because he’s actually a really complicated guy and sort of doesn’t like it when people figure that out. So he’s really all about putting the parts of himself he wants people to know about right out on display, so they don’t look too close at the rest of him.”

“Huh,” Finn said, blinking as that realigned a few of his impressions into something more coherent. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Arana said, “oh. Everyone thinks they know everything there is to know about him because he just puts it right out there. His Mom and Pop were Rebellion war heroes. He was top of his class at the Academy in a bunch of subjects, and was also a party animal. He’s an excellent pilot. He can fly anything. He doesn’t drink much. He sounds like he’s from one of the Core Worlds, maybe Corellia or somewhere like that.”

“Does he?” Finn asked. He considered it. He didn’t know much about the Core. He’d spent his whole life in the Unknown Regions, pretty much. “Where is he from?”

“Yavin 4,” Arana said. “And he’ll tell anyone who asks, he doesn’t hide it. But most people don’t really put that together. Yavin is where the Battle of Yavin was, and that’s important, and people kind of absent-mindedly think of Yavin as somewhere important.”

“Is it?” Finn asked, because he honestly had no idea.

“No,” Arana said. “It’s in the Outer Rim and it’s not even particularly close to any major hyperlanes.”

Finn had heard disparaging comments about Outer Rim backwaters. They’d mostly been context-free, for him, but he’d put together what people probably meant from it anyway. “Is it nice?” he asked, because he really didn’t know.

Arana laughed. “No,” he said. “Well. I mean, if you like forests, it’s all right, but it’s pretty remote. Not a lot of people live there. It’s not exactly cosmopolitan. But from looking at Poe, you’d figure it was a pretty hip place. He always dresses casually but fashionably. He’s well-traveled and well-read but never brags about it, particularly. His hair always looks like he just got out of bed.”

“He spends forever on his hair,” Finn said, hitting on something he could relate to in this description. “I had no idea until I watched him do it.”

Arana pointed at him. “Exactly,” he said. “You already know him better than most people.”

“And I just figured his beard comes in really thick,” Finn said, “but he doesn’t shave every day, that’s why it looks like that!”

Arana nodded. “He’s got a really complicated schedule,” he said.

“I never thought about it like that,” Finn said.

“He expends a lot of effort to look exactly how he wants to look,” Arana said, “and even more effort to make it look like he doesn’t try very hard at it. Because it’s all a front. He wants to control how people see him, as much as possible, so that they don’t look too closely at the parts of himself that he doesn’t want them to.”

Finn gave himself a moment to think about that by eating some of his stew before it went cold. The protein chunks in it were really satisfying, flavorful and sort of stringy but in a way that fell apart between the back teeth. He’d asked what it was but hadn’t understood the answer. Food here was a constant mystery. “I think I was sort of starting to put that together,” Finn said.

“I figured you would,” Arana said. “Like I said, you’re quick. But here’s the thing. That deliberateness doesn’t mean he’s a phony person. He’s very honest. He’s only trying to protect himself because he’s gotten hurt kind of a lot in his life. It’s to keep himself safe, see?” And there was something harder and sort of keen in Arana’s look.

“I see,” Finn said, and he really did. “He has friends to help keep him safe, though, right?”

“Well,” Arana said, expression shading toward satisfied, “exactly.”

Finn nodded. “He has another one, now,” he said firmly, and Arana sat back a little and smiled.

“Good,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went on a weird mental tangent; in Dave Van Ronk’s version of this song, he pronounces “Noah” as “Nora”, and Oscar Isaac echoes that in his performance as Llewyn Davis, and so I’ve now extrapolated that there’s a Nora in the SW universe who functions, perhaps, like Mary, and that’s who Norasol is named for; her name was Marisol but that comes from Maria de la Soledad, and I thought it should be Nora instead, about whom there is some important dove-related legend.  
> And so we get Poe, crooning about Nora’s dove, with a Sadness Beard and unruly hair, and that’s perhaps some kind of foreshadowing and perhaps not, and maybe I just want you to know the song so you can get it stuck in your head later. 
> 
> Also in my head Iolo Arana is played by Rami Malek, you’re very welcome.


	5. For The Republic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunion, expansion, education. Patriotism, of a sort, and, just what Poe needed, additional infamy.  
> (Also poop jokes, fair warning. I really couldn't help myself.)  
> Oh, and there's art for this chapter, and it contains a visual joke I've been looking forward to for literal months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have good music for this chapter but I blathered about it while writing the chapter [here](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/140742157034/continuing-the-series-on-music-in-the-star-wars).

 

It was only when he tasted the blood that Poe realized he’d been biting his lip while he stared at the New Republic cruiser looming up in his instruments. “Fuck,” he muttered, licking at the torn place. It probably wouldn’t show.

ARE WE GOING IN OR WHAT, BB-8 demanded on the text readout.

“Yeah yeah,” Poe muttered. _Pull yourself together, Poe Dameron._ He couldn’t let this rhyndo thing get under his skin and make him too much of a coward to do his goddamn job. He swallowed blood and tried to steady his shaking hands. He could do this. No problem. He was brave enough for this.

He clicked the comm link on and switched to a New Republic frequency. “Hail the ship,” he said. “Hail the ship. This is Hallitt Two, New Republican Fleet, Nahul Powell piloting. What’s your status?”

There was a long, conspicuous silence. “Stand by please,” said a slightly-shaky voice.

WHAT THE FUCK, BB-8 texted.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Might be glad I went for the indirect approach.”

The comm clicked. “Please repeat designation,” said a man’s voice, more confidently. It was a familiar voice, and one he’d expected to encounter on this ship, so that was reassuring.

“What, is your regular radio operator drunk?” Poe asked drily. “I said this is a New Republican Fleet vessel enquiring as to your status.”

“Our regular radio operator was a First Order plant,” said the man’s voice, “and I asked you to repeat your designation, because I know for a fact Nahul Powell was on Hosnia Prime when it blew and I just want you to lie to my face so I feel better about obliterating you.”

I LIKE THIS DUDE, BB-8 said.

“Never change, Seri,” Poe said, achingly fond; he was _so_ glad the man wasn’t dead. “Never fuckin’ change. This is Black One with the Resistance, piloted by yours truly Poe Dameron, and you said the magic words. How the hell are you?”

“I just led a fucking mutiny,” Seri Dekar said. “Poe fucking Dameron. Poe fucking-- are you fucking serious?”

“I am never fucking serious,” Poe said. Relief made him giddy. “What the fuck happened to fucking Hon Jelleth? I got him listed as the commander of this bucket.”

LANGUAGE, BB-8 put in, just to be a troll.

“I shot him,” Seri said, voice a little shriller than normal. “We’ve got a whole fucking crew of babies on this hunk of junk and he wanted to go fly straight to the First Order and I told him to fuck himself, and he tried to space me so I fucking shot him.”

“Oh fuck,” Poe said, “you got the middie cruise?” He’d thought as much-- the manifesto hadn’t been updated but he knew it was the time of year for it. His chest went tight. The midshipmen’s cruise was an annual outing of the newest baby officers in the Fleet. “How many you got?”

“I have sixteen first cadets, twenty-two second cadets, and seventy-eight midshipmen,” he said, and his voice had gone shaky. That meant eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen-year-olds. “And then there’s me and a captain, three lieutenants, and a skeleton crew of grown-up NCOs.”

“Fuck,” Poe said, “oh fuck, Seri,” and he was crying. That was almost a whole year’s worth of middies who hadn’t died when Hosnia got obliterated. One hundred sixteen teenagers who weren’t dead.

“I know,” Seri said, and he was crying too. “Fucking hell, Dameron, I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for the Fleet for you to be fucking _right_.”

WHAT THE SHIT, BB-8 texted.

“Juveniles, Beep,” Poe said. “Babies. A bunch of baby humans who didn’t get murdered.” He flipped his goggles up a second to wipe his eyes.

OH YEAH, BB-8 conceded. WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GONNA DO WITH A BUNCH OF BABIES?

“Save them,” Poe said.

 

He wasn’t an idiot. He made them both land on neutral territory (a nearby uninhabited planet), and scanned carefully to ascertain that nobody powered up weapons, that there were as many life signs as Seri had said. He staged the meeting ground so BB-8 could still cover him with the X-Wing’s guns, and brought his blaster out with him in his hand, and left his helmet on, with BB-8’s text readout on his visor.

ALL CLEAR SO FAR, BB-8 texted.

Major Dekar lowered the hatch of his shuttle and strode out. He was a slight dark-haired man, slighter even than Poe, and had his arm in a sling, and was flanked by a master sergeant who looked about fifty and a first cadet who was definitely a shiny nineteen if he was a day.

YOU SHOULD RUB YOURSELF ON HIM, BB-8 offered helpfully. HE IS ATTRACTIVE FOR A HUMANOID ACCORDING TO ALL MY METRICS. MORE ATTRACTIVE THAN HE WAS WHEN YOU LAST RUBBED YOURSELF ON HIM.

“Shut up, Beep,” he muttered, and holstered his blaster. He didn’t really need to think about the incredibly awkward but entertaining sex he and Seri had had when they were both nineteen and had survived a near-impossible class assignment together. Seri looked really, really tired. He came up to Poe without slowing, and stared him up and down.

“It’s really you,” he said.

STILL ALL CLEAR, BB said, and so Poe pulled his helmet off and stared at Seri. “I blew it up,” he said fiercely.

“What did you blow up this time?” he asked, a little disarmed.

“The weapon they used to vaporize Hosnia,” he said. “I had a lot of help but I was the one who fired the shot that blew it up.”

Seri grinned suddenly. “Good for you,” he said.

“It doesn’t undo it,” he said, “but it--” He had tears in his eyes again. “I killed a lot of them, Seri, I killed a _whole fuckload_ of those assholes.”

Seri came forward and threw his arms around Poe’s neck, and Poe dropped his helmet and hugged him back hard enough to lift him off the ground. “I can’t believe Poe fucking Dameron was fucking right all the fuck along,” Seri said, and sobbed into his neck. “What the fuck do we do now, Dameron? What the fuck do we do?”

“We save those kids,” Poe said, putting him down. He wiped his face. “We-- look, okay, the Resistance, we’re trying to track down all the surviving Republican Fleet vessels, and anyone else we think we can help. We’re trying to collect everyone together we can still find. Because that was just the opening strike, and the First Order has a lot more planned.”

“I know,” Seri said. “I-- Dameron, I know. And I don’t know where to take this fucking boat, we were supposed to go back to the fucking Academy-- the Academy’s gone, Dameron! The fucking-- Academy is gone.” He was shaking. Seri had always been a by-the-book kinda guy, appealingly nerdy and sweet, far too sweet for Poe to maintain more than a casual friendship with. It had been a little awkward but they’d both handled it. Poe had avoided finding out what Seri’s opinion of his defection had been, along with a bunch of his other classmates, because he’d figured he could guess. Things were different now, though.

“Hey,” Poe said, “fuck,” and looked over at the master sergeant, whose expression had gone sort of wobbly too. “Hey. Hey. Everybody. We’re gonna be okay.”

“I _shot my superior officer_ ,” Seri said.

Poe knew that feeling. “Hey,” he said, “that’s one up over anything I ever did. All I did was desert my post.” He pulled Seri back into an embrace. “Buck up, brother,” he said. “We’re gonna make a plan.”

“I think,” the master sergeant said, “we should join the Resistance.”

“I think these kids need to go home to their families,” Poe said.

“I think most of these kids’ families are dead,” the master sergeant countered, a little more quietly. Poe looked at the heretofore-silent first cadet, whose lip wobbled.

“Mine is,” the first cadet said. He was nineteen, Poe thought, that kid was nineteen fucking years old. Same age he and Seri had been, pulling all-nighters and arguing about the best caf-stim flavors.

“Well,” Poe said, “fuck.” He took a steadying breath. “Have you had contact with any other New Republic vessels or outposts?”

“Negative,” said the master sergeant. “Most of the Republic frequencies are just so much dead air.”

“Organa’s gonna kill me if I show up with a bunch of middies,” Poe said, faintly hysterical at the very thought of it.

“Are you kidding?” Seri barked out a watery laugh. “These kids are fucking fanatics. When I grabbed the intercom and said we had First Order spies on board they all went nuts. On their own they came up with interrogation panels and cross-examined each other and came up with their own new loyalty oaths. Half of them have been asking if we can just turn pirate. These kids are a bunch of fucking savages. Organa will _love_ them.”

 

 

Poe activated the comm link with a little bit of trepidation. “Black One, hailing the tower,” he said.

“Poe,” Kaydel Ko Connix said. “What you got there with you?”

“Oh man,” he said. “Brace yourselves. I found the middie cruise.”

“Are you fucking serious,” Kaydel Ko said. She’d graduated from the Academy only two years before; her middie cruise had been pretty damn recent.

“I,” Poe said, “am never fucking serious. Get the General.”

SHIT GETS REEEEEEAAAALLLL, BB-8 texted.

“Are we clear?” Seri asked breathlessly over the comm.

“Get off the line,” he said, “I don’t have confirmation yet. I’ll fucking tell you.” He cut the connection, just as it crackled from the tower.

“Dameron,” the General said, “you didn’t actually bring me the middie cruise.”

“I sure did,” he said. “Major Seri Dekar shot Commander Hon Jelleth when he came out in support of the First Order and would have turned the ship over to them. I’ve got basically the entire class on that boat.”

“Fuck me sideways,” the General said. “We’ve got to get those kids home.”

“A bunch of ‘em are orphans now,” Poe said grimly, “and Dekar says they’ve been asking him to be pirates. I identified myself as with the Resistance and they went nuts. They all want a piece of the First Order. I don’t know what the fuck to do, General.”

“So you brought them to me,” the General said. “And now it’s my problem.”

“Yup,” Poe said. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, isn’t it?”

“I need a raise,” the General said. “All right, you’re clear to land.”

“Great,” Poe said. “I’ll break it to ‘em gently.”

ANARCHY, BB-8 texted. JUST FUCKING ANARCHY EVERYWHERE.

“I’m going to unplug you, you little shit,” Poe said, and clicked the comm over to the cruiser. “Good news, Major Dekar, your request to join the Resistance has been approved by the General.”

Seri held down the switch so Poe could hear the wild cheering in the ship’s bridge. It almost blew out the speakers of his headphone. This was going to be a goddamn disaster.

 

 

 

Meanwhile Nien Nunb had found a ship of the line that had holed up in neutral territory and fought a brutal civil war in miniature through its own corridors. In the end, three dozen First Order sympathizers had gotten shot, stabbed, spaced, or imprisoned, and there were three hundred crew members still alive and still loyal to the Republic. Of those, almost a hundred were pilots, and the ship had eighty fully-functional X-wings in its bay.

All of them signed on with the Resistance without hesitation.

Poe was never going to live this down.

 

______

______

 

“Are there normally this many people on the firing range?” Finn asked, looking over his shoulder at the crowd who had gathered on the embankment overlooking the shooting range. The range was outdoors, as everything that could be was on Nellia despite the rain. It only made sense; the more he learned about the logistics of the whole base, the more he could see how much they relied on temporary structures, earthen embankments, that sort of thing instead of trying to set up duracrete factories to make conventional buildings. It was just easier this way, and so the shooting range was in a valley with a huge embankment behind the last target to serve as a backstop. Beyond it, as the valley continued, were the targeting ranges for the artillery, and the range where the aircraft practiced strafing runs.

It meant the valley’s gentle slope at the entrance to the shooting range provided ideal seating for a surprisingly large number of people who had apparently turned out expressly to watch Finn’s performance on the shooting range. And he knew that, fine well, but he was playing dumb here. He’d made Arana his accessory, and Arana had laid all kinds of bets on his performance. (Finn would’ve conspired with Poe, but Poe had been offworld for four days. It was probably better coming from Arana; Poe would’ve wrecked it by insisting on defending Finn. Arana had been perfectly fine letting everyone think whatever they thought.)

Everyone had been insultingly eager to bet against him, but Finn absolutely knew why: the Stormtroopers of the old Empire had been trained very, very differently than they were now, by the First Order.

He surveyed his options, which were an assortment of blasters, from little handheld units to big rifles. They were an impressive assortment of different vintages, from really really old to quite new. He pointed out one of them. “Hey,” he said, “where would you even get one of these? I trained on one but I don’t think they make them anymore.”

“They definitely don’t,” Statura said, and rattled off the specs, which of course Finn knew, though he’d never visited the planet of manufacture as Statura evidently had.

“I’m not so well-traveled,” Finn said, “I just have trained on a lot of different blasters. This one, though, that’s the standard issue currently for most troops.” He pointed at one of the newer models. “I don’t like the safety mechanism at all, it’s not intuitive, but I suppose that’s what practice is for.”

“I find it not the most graceful to handle,” Statura conceded.

“But it’s very easy to recharge,” Finn said, “and if you’re looking for uniformity of performance, you can’t ask for more. We usually were issued weapons and then turned them back in after a duty posting, so you couldn’t spend a lot of time getting to know an individual one’s idiosyncrasies, you know? So it’s definitely better to have a very uniform weapon above all, as opposed to a perhaps better-made one that’s going to have quirks.”

“Excellent point,” Statura said.

Finn nodded. “It made sense to me,” he said. He picked up that blaster, and turned it over in his hands, checking the charge, checking the sights. It was familiar in his hands. “It’s not the most accurate, it’s not the best-performing overall, but it’s very consistent from one to the next. You get this, you know what it’ll do. Zero need to sight it in, zero need to accustom yourself to it individually.”

The crowd had gone quiet. They were just waiting to see if he was any good. Finn knew first-hand that a lot of them had a lot of money riding on this, so the atmosphere was a bit tense. But he’d undergone more intensive tests than this, so he was kind of enjoying it and wasn’t nervous at all. He squinted through the sights, then pointed the blaster downrange and sighted at the target. Everyone was holding their breath, but he didn’t fire; he put the weapon up and laughed.

“Provided,” he said, “this thing’s in good working order.” He pulled the charge component out. “It’s prone to corrosion on the contacts. Never fire one of these things without looking at the contacts first. I learned that the hard way.” He spun the charge component in his hand, and flaked a tiny particle of corrosion off the contacts with his finger, showing it to Statura. “You guys must not use many of these. You gotta know where to look.”

“Oh my,” Statura said, leaning in to look at the particle.

“It’s only a little bit,” Finn said, “it wouldn’t have malfunctioned, but use it twice or three times more and that’d build up and you’d fry the charge controller.” He laughed again. “Try doing that on an exercise, and then you’re the asshole without a blaster and you’re up on discipline to the unit commander.”

It was a lot worse if you were firing blank charges, which was why he knew so much about it, but he didn’t need to share that with them. Checking your charge component contacts was just good practice, and often overlooked, because it was only the new high-efficiency modules that had the issue. People who’d grown up using old equipment never thought of it.

He stuck the charge component back in, and re-set the weapon, waiting for it to blink a ready light sequence at him. “I’d never seen that issue before,” Statura said.

“Well,” Finn said, sizing up the targets, blaster still cradled in both hands. “It’s only an issue on this model and similar ones. The old-style components don’t do it, but they also don’t last as long. So it’s a trade-off.” As he said the last phrase, he raised the blaster and fired in one smooth motion, in the usual training sequence, starting with the closest target-- chest, head, chest, head, chest, head, chest, head, until he had smoothly obliterated the closest half-dozen targets. He put up the blaster for a moment, inspecting his handiwork. “Otherwise it seems to be in good repair,” he said to Statura, and then repeated the drill for the more distant targets, switching to single shots in a suppression pattern that had good enough accuracy that he flattened a target with every shot.

He put up the weapon again, when a nice precise pattern of twenty targets were in smoking ruin. “It’s not the most accurate weapon,” he said, “but it’s serviceable up to about that range. Beyond that they start getting a little idiosyncratic but we had specialists to deal with the longer-range stuff.”

He turned to Statura and couldn’t help but smile, a little, because Statura looked dumbfounded and the crowd behind him was starting to stir into a murmur of shocked, astonished excitement. He was good at this, was the thing, and he’d spent so long trying not to be too showy about it lest he stand out too much that it was kind of nice to get to just show off.

He ejected the charge component. “See,” he said, “there’s no corrosion yet, but it’s already discolored again. You just have to clean these every time, and store them with it out, there’s no way around it.”

The audience was getting louder, and some of them had started to cheer. Finn let himself grin broadly, and turned to look at them. It was a big assortment of people; the logistics people he’d hung out with, some of the pilots, but a lot of the ground troops he hadn’t met yet. And the unnerving-looking protocol droid, PZ-4C0, who frequently followed the General around, though the General was of course not present. PZ-4CO was obviously recording the proceedings, as she was wont to do.

“What?” Finn asked, feigning innocence. He put a hand on his hip, still holding the blaster in his other hand, pointed at the ground. “Did someone tell you Stormtroopers couldn’t shoot, or something?”

 

 

Poe came back from his latest excursion with a ship full of cadets. Finn couldn’t really understand precisely what the big deal was, but he understood that it was one; they were second-year students at the Academy, and most of them were sixteen, and to these people that mattered. He knew that. It seemed to shake them all up. They seemed to think that beyond these students’ necessarily very low military rank, their age alone made it unsuitable to ask them to make a choice about what organization they belonged to. But the students themselves had chosen against the First Order, even when the commander of their ship had turned out to sympathize with the organization. That suggested to Finn that they were perfectly capable of choosing sides. That and the fact that, well, they’d signed up for the military, hadn’t they? He himself hadn’t signed up for anything, he’d just been conscripted into it before he could even really remember. By this age he’d been pretty far along in his training, and nobody had really considered him a child anymore.

He didn’t speak up, though, just sat in the meeting like he’d sat in every meeting he’d been invited to so far.

 

Afterward Poe came and sat next to him in the mess hall, and he seemed all right, if a bit tired. But Finn noticed that his hands were shaking badly; Poe made several attempts to drink from a mug of tea and kept having to put the cup down. “Are you all right?” Finn asked finally.

“Stimulants,” Poe said, which didn’t really clear much up. Finn stared at him. “The stimulants are wearing off,” Poe clarified, when Finn didn’t say anything.

“What stimulants.” Finn frowned.

Poe really concentrated, and managed to get his mug of tea to his mouth and take a sip, though he spilled some. Finn grabbed the cup and steadied it as he set it down. “Thanks. Stimulants. When we do these four, five-day missions with no real copilot we can’t exactly sleep, so we take a bunch of stimulants, and it’s fine when you’re on them but when you come down-- well, _I_ get the shakes anyway, not everybody does.”

“I didn’t know,” Finn said. “I thought the astromechs were copilots?”

“They are,” Poe said, “but not like-- not like they could take over. Mostly they can’t fly the thing themselves. They’re there to assist, because it’s not really a one-man craft.”

“Um,” Finn said. “So you can’t get out of that seat.” He’d been in the X-Wing cockpit, he knew that. There was nowhere to be.

“Right,” Poe said.

“So um.” Finn had not contemplated the logistics of being in an X-Wing for more than a few hours. He knew they wore compression gear under the flight suits, to keep circulation to their extremities even without gravity. But he hadn’t really thought about anything beyond that.

“There’s no refresher,” Poe said. “You gotta wear a piss bag. It’s not as glamorous as it looks in the holos.”

“Four days,” Finn said.

“The drugs kind of, stop things up. But you don’t want to know what my digestive system’s like after all these years,” Poe said. “I don’t know that I really want to have this conversation in the nominal presence of food.”

“Holy shit,” Finn said.

“It’s really not,” Poe said. He frowned at his tea mug, but Finn could see he had his hands jammed under his thighs.

“Are you hallucinating?” Finn asked. “The only time they gave me stimulants I hallucinated.”

“I’m high as fuck,” Poe admitted. “I mean, it’s routine, but. This kind of crash is pretty brutal.” He bit his lip. “It’s kind of. Additive. Gets worse cumulatively. I haven’t totally detoxed in like. Well, since before Starkiller. I probably— I shouldn’t have come off it cold turkey like this but I’m just real tired of the drugs.”

“Can I take you home and put you to bed?” Finn asked.

“I’m trying to get this mug of tea down so I can go shit my brains out,” Poe said. “It’s going to be another two or three hours before I can handle getting into bed.”

Finn eyed Poe’s hands, the visible tremors in his arms, and then picked up the mug. “You want a straw?” he asked.

“A straw would’ve been smart,” Poe said, “but I am not known for my smarts.” He leaned forward a little and Finn carefully tipped the mug for him. “Thanks, you’re a pal.”

Finn patiently helped him drink the rest of the tea. “The best thing,” Poe said, and he was shivering all over by now, not just his hands, “is when you get back from this sort of thing, and you’re on the shitter, and your commanding officer like pokes her head in the door and is like when you’re done there I need you to go back out, and you’re like--” He trailed off, looking woeful. “Maybe it’s not so bad for the non-humanoids but I just know, man, once you taper off the drugs, it’s a _wild ride_ for a day or so.”

“This explains so much about pilots,” Finn said, resting his chin in his hand. The tea mug was still warm in his other hand. “Should I get you more tea, or maybe some of that baked thing or something?”

“No,” Poe said, “no no, I gotta reintroduce solids _gently_ to my diet at some point.”

Finn considered that. “Do you not eat while you’re out?”

“I mean,” Poe said, “you’ve got to keep the blood sugar up, but.” He shrugged. “It’s not really food.”

“Aren’t you starving?” Finn asked, alarmed.

Poe shook his head, eyes wide. “No fuckin’ way,” he said. “It takes me like a day to figure out chewing and swallowing again.”

“Let me get some water into you then,” Finn said, “and maybe some bread?”

“Like, _one_ piece of bread,” Poe said. “Like, a _little_ one. Maybe. Wow, you’re really gonna just go get it for me?”

“Sit there,” Finn said, “you’ve been staring through me and twitching, I don’t trust you with routine tasks like walking.”

He thought about putting jam on the bread but didn’t, just took the jar back with him. Poe looked interested, but then made a face. “Sugar will only make this worse,” he said. He was shaking badly now, but with Finn’s help drank the cup of water and ate the piece of bread, and then sat staring wide-eyed at nothing for an alarmingly long moment.

“Hey,” Finn said finally, “are you still with me?”

“I have no idea where I am,” Poe admitted. “You’ve got like, eight eyes.” He grabbed one of Finn’s hands with both of his, and his hands were freezing cold and shaking. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay, man. I do this a lot. It’s-- I’ll let you know if anything happens that isn’t totally normal. I’m gonna-- I’m gonna go to the shitter now. You can go on about your day. If you want, come check on me in like an hour? I might have passed out in there. Okay?”

“I could come with you,” Finn said.

“You don’t want to be anywhere near this when it happens,” Poe said. “It’s sweet of you to offer though.”

“I’m a stormtrooper,” Finn reminded him, “we have literally no notion of privacy. I cannot tell you how weird it is for me to go into a room by myself to shit. I’m used to doing that socially. We had, like, schedules.”

“Really,” Poe said, laughing.

“Yes,” Finn said. “I had, like, shitting buddies. We all went at the same time every day. The time a stomach bug went around was fucking devastating to our regularity, it upset us so much. We had schedules. We had buddies. It threw us all off. It was awful.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Poe said, giggling helplessly. “Oh-- oh no, don’t make me laugh.”

“I’m dead fucking serious,” Finn said. “If you want me to come hold your hand while you take a monster shit that is not in any way weird to me and it weirds me the fuck out that it is to you. Stormtroopers never went through that shit alone. Literally. You were never alone.”

“Shit,” Poe said, “if you make me laugh any more I’m not going to make it.”

Finn stood up and held out his hand. “I will get you there,” he said.

Poe genuinely seemed not to want him to come into the room with him, so Finn let him go in alone, but he stayed outside the door and kept up a running commentary. “Don’t fall in!” he yelled.

“You’re an asshole,” Poe said, and then groaned in what sounded like genuine distress.

“Hang in there,” Finn said. “It’s okay. I know you can do this.”

“Dear sweet heaven,” Poe said, “take me now.”

“Don’t give up the fight,” Finn said. “You’re a hero of the Resistance.”

Poe whimpered. “Finn,” he said, after a little while of silence, during which Finn whistled a song to himself-- the one about punctuality, he’d always sort of liked that one even if the lyrics were trash-- “Finn, really, you don’t have to sit here through this.”

“I’m here for you, buddy,” Finn said.

“I mean really,” Poe said. “It’s gonna be a while. Like, that was the main event, but there’s. There’s an afterparty.”

“This is a new experience for me,” Finn said. “I’m learning about being a pilot. I feel like this is important, not just to my education, Poe, but to our friendship.”

“There are some roads a man has to walk alone,” Poe said.

Finn considered it. “If you really want privacy,” he said, “I’ll go, but I’ll worry about you the whole time.”

“I’m just taking a shit,” Poe said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You’re _hallucinating_ and _shaking_ and taking a shit,” Finn said. “That’s different. I have no notion of privacy, though, so I honestly don’t know if you really want me to leave or not.”

Poe didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did, he was a lot quieter. “Actually, I do kind of like the company,” he said. “Usually right around now I, ah, I get the terror, but it’s kind of, it’s not so bad this time.”

“If you opened the door, I’d hold your hand,” Finn said.

“You don’t want that,” Poe said. “Neither of us wants that. This door is providing a crucial service.”

“If you mean, blocking the smell, it’s really not,” Finn said, “but remember, my old department was sanitation. I _promise_ you I’ve smelled worse, this doesn’t even register.”

There was a silence. “Somehow that doesn’t help me,” Poe said.

“It should,” Finn said. “Remember, we had pilots too. I didn’t know what their deal was, but believe me, I knew they had some kinda deal going on. I just thought they got crazy rations or something.”

There was a noise, and it took Finn a moment to realize that Poe was laughing. “You’re killing me,” he said finally.

“I hope not,” Finn answered. “That’d be more awkward than I think my position can yet tolerate.”

“You’re more important than you realize,” Poe said, but then fell silent, and Finn figured he’d better give him a moment. So he went back to whistling, this time the one about the virtues of conformity. In retrospect, all of them had atrocious lyrics and incompetent rhyme schemes, but he genuinely hadn’t known any better, so.

He did now. That meant something, surely. “So this is really weird for you people, huh?” he asked, when he figured enough time had passed.

“We really don’t shit socially,” Poe said. “It’s not just me being a prude. We’re pretty much all gonna think it’s weird.”

“Huh,” Finn said. He looked around. “So I’ve had to learn a lot of new stuff here, and I think this? This might be the weirdest thing. It’s a bodily function! It’s a thing literally everyone does! Why do you have to go do it secretly?”

“It’s probably the most intensely private thing we do,” Poe said. “Nudity, most of us get over that. Sex, whatever. But I don’t think I’ve ever in my life been in the same room as another adult while taking a crap.”

“Peeing, though,” Finn said.

“Well,” Poe said. “Everyone pees. It’s easier if you have a, you know, appendage with a urethra you can aim. Some people are private about that but like. It’s not that weird. But taking a shit? That’s private.”

“I guess,” Finn said. “I don’t really get why, though.” He thought about it a moment. “Babies, though! They just shit themselves all the time, don’t tell me that freaks you people out?”

“No,” Poe said, “that’s-- I mean, if you have kids, you change diapers, that’s just how it is. But it skeeves out people who don’t have kids.”

“So at what age is it suddenly taboo?” Finn asked. “I mean, it’s-- it’s a natural bodily function that literally everyone has to do at least once a day if they’re not on drugs.”

“Fuck me,” Poe said, “you just made me think about the fact that Leia fucking Organa has changed my shitty diapers in my life, and a big part of what I do here in the Resistance is avoid thinking about that.” He was laughing helplessly again.

“I can’t help what I do,” Finn said, amused. “I mean, I guess that gives me context, though. She has dealt with your literal shit, and you’d die for her. That’s a hell of a bond.”

“That’s not _why_ ,” Poe said, indignant but also possibly dying of laughter.

“No, no,” Finn said, “that’s totally it. The shit-bond. It’s sacred to your people. I get it now.”

“Fuck you,” Poe said weakly. “Fuck-- fuck you.”

“Really?” Finn asked. “This is the weirdest courtship ritual I’ve ever encountered, I swear.”

“No,” Poe moaned. “That’s not-- argh.”

“Are you telling me we’re not poo-bonded?” Finn asked. “Does it have to be reciprocal? Because I mean. I could arrange for that. I mean, I’m usually more of a mid-morning guy myself, but—“

“I don’t need to know your bowel movement schedule,” Poe said. “I really don’t. It’s not that I reject intimacy with you, I just— there are things that are private, Finn, and you should learn that. Some things are private.”

“I’ll learn whatever you want me to learn,” Finn said, and let that go for a moment, and then made himself go on. “Like, I mean. If you ever want to sleep by yourself for once, you just gotta let me know.”

There was a silent moment and Finn kind of held his breath, waiting for Poe to take the out. But then came the sudden sound of water running, and after another moment the door opened and Poe looked down at him.

Finn shifted over, and Poe sat down next to him, looking exhausted, drying his hands on his trousers. “No,” Poe said, “I don’t want to sleep alone.” He slumped over and put his head on Finn’s shoulder. “I won’t lie, though, I’m being a little weird, it’s not really normal to just want someone to share your bed.” He was so tired, suddenly, that he was slurring his words, and Finn put an arm around him in concern.

“I guess,” Finn said. “Come on, let’s put you in bed before you fall over, it’s already after midnight.” He shifted, getting to his feet and pulling Poe up beside him.

“Yeah,” Poe said, accepting his help and leaning heavily on him, unsteady. “Sorry I’m so weird. I’ve had a really hard— couple years really— and I think I’m getting old, or broken, or something.”

“You’re starting to not make any sense,” Finn said. “You might as well save it for morning, okay?”

“No, no,” Poe said, and Finn seriously considered just picking him up and carrying him. His feet were sort of dragging. “No, it’s important, Finn, it’s— important.”

“I bet,” Finn said.

“You’re important,” Poe said. “You’re so important, Finn, and you’re-- so great. And. To me.”

“Well, thanks,” Finn said, “I think.”

“I mean it,” Poe insisted. “I want to give you things. Like me.”

“Well, you should do what you want,” Finn said indulgently. They made it to Poe’s hut, and Finn yanked Poe’s boots off him, took his jacket off him, dumped him onto the bed. “It’s not weird to undress someone who’s not totally okay, is it?” Finn asked.

“I’m totally okay,” Poe said, clearly crashing hard. Finn took his trousers off, and his shirt, since it had buttons that would probably mash uncomfortably into his chest in his sleep. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Okay,” Finn said. Poe lay precisely as Finn had left him, already asleep. Finn laughed and shucked his own clothes, and climbed into bed, shoving Poe over to make room and get the blankets over them.

Poe rolled over and wrapped himself around Finn, and Finn reflexively kissed his head just above the hairline. Poe was already too fast asleep to notice, so Finn couldn’t ask if that was weird.

 

Poe slept through the night, this time. Most nights he cried in his sleep, or sat up in apparent panic, or said unintelligible things in either gibberish or a language Finn didn’t speak until Finn talked him down. Apparently he did all those things in his sleep, because he never seemed to remember them the next day. This time, though, he lay still and silent through the entire night, and it was so odd that Finn woke three times and took his pulse, just to make sure.

 

_____

 

 

Poe had a little mental list of new Resistance standards that he was going to work through, and he had a murmured conversation about it with Dr. Kalonia, who played the harp and was old enough to know most of the Rebel Alliance songs Poe had learned at his mother’s knee.

“It’s their first evening,” Kalonia said, looking over at the clusters of kids around the tables. They’d gotten in so late yesterday, it had been hubbub most of the night, but by now everyone was settled. This was the first gathering of everybody in the mess hall like this. “I mean. We’ve got to.”

“I figure,” Poe said, and he held up his hand to tick them off on his fingers, “open up with a couple of Academy standards to make ‘em feel at home, throw in the Ballad of Han Solo, do the new verse on the end and make everybody cry, then straight into something urgent and political--”

“Do the _Yssira Zyde_ song,” Kalonia said.

“You think that’s-- I don’t know, I always feel weird performing that one, people think I wrote it and then there I am calling myself brave.” Poe made a face. “I can’t sing about Yssira. You do that one.”

“I come across too earnest,” Kalonia said. “Maybe late in the evening, I could do that one. Do the one about the massacre.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, “that one.”

“I think at least the first song you’re going to do alone,” she said. “Let it be more casual. You’re not performing, you’re just singing it. So do one of those and let them gather around you, I’ll just kind of sneak in. I’m off-putting, Poe.”

“You are not,” he said.

Finn had come up as they were talking and stood next to Poe, a few feet off, like a junior officer waiting to make a report, and it took Poe a moment to notice that. “I am,” Kalonia was saying, “people have to warm up to me.”

Poe smiled at her, shaking his head, and then turned to Finn. “Cadet,” he said, “report,” and Finn opened his mouth before pausing and looking startled. “You don’t have to stand there like that,” Poe said more gently.

“I was just trying to figure out what you were going on about so intently,” Finn said, disconcerted.

Poe clapped him on the shoulder. “Music, my friend,” he said. “You can sing, can’t you?”

“Uh,” Finn said.

“You can speak, that means you can sing,” Poe said, which was a conversation he’d had before. Sometimes if you led a lot of singing sessions you had to manage tone-deaf enthusiastic helpers, and there were techniques for that. He didn’t think Finn was tone-deaf, though. The guy hummed plenty.

“Sure,” Finn said, “but I like to listen to you.”

“Thanks,” Poe said, weirdly touched; people complimented his singing a lot but it was usually because he was singing Significant Things, or old standards that made the old people cry. “So I’ll do one by myself and then I’ll do one with a repeating chorus so you can just-- join in, and that ought to get everybody who knows the songs singing, so we’ll do maybe like a third one together-- I’m thinking Never No More in the middle, right?”

“Oh yes,” Kalonia said. “Let me go plug in the auto-tuner, you know it takes forever for that finicky thing to warm up.”

“And then after the song about the massacre, a couple more old standards, and then I’ll go retune or something, and you sing the Yssira Zyde song without me.”

“Perfect!” Kalonia said. “No, that’s perfect, because it’s about you and I was just thinking about how awkward it would be to sing it if you weren’t singing.”

Poe made a gesture between his head and hers. “Wavelength, man,” he said. “We’re on a frequency here. Let’s do this.”

Finn looked impressed. “I figured you guys just like-- played whatever you wanted,” he said, as Poe went into the gear room to retrieve his guitar. He didn’t plug it in, he’d manually tune it, that would give people a more gentle segue into the idea of music happening.

Poe shrugged. “Sometimes it’s best to kind of work out what you know beforehand,” he said. “And anyway, Kalonia and I, we play together a lot now that she’s warmed up to me a little. We have goals in mind and we like to think about who our audience is.”

“There are a lot of people here,” Finn said.

Poe carried the instrument in its case out into the mess hall, and set himself up on a bench in the middle of one side of the wall, got comfortable and took his manual tuner out and set it on the bench where he could see it. “Can you hold that for me?” he asked, seeing a way to get Finn to stick close.

“Sure,” Finn said. “Like this?”

“Perfect,” Poe said, and did the octave interval first. He was only on the second set when BB-8 came rolling in, demanding to hold the tuner.

“You have a perfectly good automatic tuner,” BB-8 scolded.

“Let Finn help,” Poe said, nudging BB with his boot.

BB-8 started to protest, then stopped, swiveled eir sensors to look between Poe and Finn, and then looked back at Poe. “I see,” ey beeped slyly.

“Beep, you’re so rude,” Poe informed em, and tuned the third string. People had noticed now; the first few notes hadn’t made much impression in the din in the room, but BB’s loud burbling had interrupted some people, and now they were watching. Time to put on the persona.

“If the playing of music doesn’t woo him,” BB said, “nothing will.”

Poe nudged him with his toe again. “Don’t even,” he said. “If you’re not going to help, just go charge up or something, don’t be a brat.”

“He’s not mad at me, is he?” Finn asked.

Poe prodded BB-8 one more time with his foot, then the last string was tuned to his satisfaction, so he plucked them each in succession to double-check, got a green light from the tuner, and started into the silliest little Academy ditty he could think of.

 

> _So it’s ho, hey, hee,_  
>  _the Academy for me,_  
>  _to learn how to fly_  
>  _to learn how to fight_  
>  _to learn how to drink,_  
>  _and get fucked all night,  
>  _ _\-- ho, hey, hee!  
>  _ _the Academy for me!_

Finn was laughing before Poe even finished the filthy part of it, and he was so young, he could have been a cadet. When Poe was his age that song had still been funny, not at all bitter or nostalgic.

“Do they still sing that one?” Poe asked the nearest Academy refugee, still strumming his guitar as he segued into the next song, which was a little more of a real song.

“They did,” the second lieutenant answered, suddenly near tears, and yeah okay Poe had miscalculated that one. Well, cut out the need to get middle-aged before you got maudlin, he supposed. He’d meant to start out cheerful but he was coming over intense and grieving instead, and that was just how the energy was going to go, you couldn’t really always control it.

He went directly into a song that was meant to be straightforward and patriotic, but slowed it down just a little bit and pushed the strings so they wavered out of tune, knowing it would be melancholy instead. He reached the chorus, which was about doing one’s duty to the New Republic, and one of the other baby officers had come to console the second lieutenant who was openly crying now.

Merciless, he pushed through to the second verse, which had all the bullshit about dignity and civic pride, and he sang the _hell_ out of it, fierce and intense and dead-fucking- _on_ and not so much as a breath of sarcasm because stars, that was his life, that had been his life-- _For the Republic, for the Republic_ , and he tacked on an extra repetition of it, _for the Republic_ , and then he paused, breathing, looking around the room, playing out the rest of the measure on the guitar, and he bared his teeth and bent his head to the third verse.

 _Stand firm, stand firm, for the Republic_ , and his voice had gone a little hoarse. But he didn’t clear it, he let it buzz a little, he knew it wouldn’t break on any of the notes left in the song. The whole room had fallen totally silent, which wasn’t what he had expected; he could see that the General had come to stand in the doorway, and he couldn’t see her expression so he looked back down, shaking his head a little and letting the words wring out of him. For duty. For comrades. For freedom. For the Republic. For the Republic. He wrung out the extra repetition again, tipping his head back, and his voice _did_ break then, just a crack, at the end of the word, and he closed his mouth and looked back down, strumming out the rest of the measure.

It was an old joke with the Resistance folks now, that the chorus of that goddamn song segued really nicely into the opening of one of the ubiquitous ballads about a cheating lover, one of the ones literally everyone knew, and it felt like it just flowed through him to do that (usually, they did it the other way, as a joke). But he skipped the opening verse with the usual trite setup, and went straight to the second verse.

 _But she deceived me,_ he sang, _and I am undone.  
__She deceived me, and I am undone.  
__While I was gone, she went to him,  
__behind my back, she went to him,  
__She deceived me, and I am undone._

He threw his head back and sang the chorus, which was cliché and foolish but catchy, and made the usual points about how a two-timing lover’s betrayal made a mockery of love, and it was one of those times. Sometimes you could just feel it, when you were singing and you had captivated the room and everyone in it was with you, even if they weren’t singing along-- they were just with you, in agreement. It was really magical when it happened, it rarely happened, and it was absolutely not what he had meant to do, but it was what was happening, so he was doing it.

He didn’t sing the third verse, which was about rocking the cradle with another man’s baby, he just sang the second verse again, more sincere than he had ever been in his life, so sincere it fucking _hurt_. It was fucking true, the Republic had deceived him, and his heart was broken.

_She deceived me, and I am undone._

He let that hang for a moment, in the murmuring quiet of the room, and then he transitioned into the guitar part for the Ballad of the _Yssira Zyde_ , which he never sang, and he just played the guitar part and looked around the room. The General was still standing in the doorway and she had her hands over her mouth, maybe in dismay. Fuck, he really hadn’t meant to do that.

“I figured it might be too political to make that third verse be where I’m rocking the cradle and the fuckin’ First Order is in it,” he said, picking delicately at the pretty ornamentation for the _Yssira Zyde_ bridge. “I’m sorry, I was just going to play some songs I liked, I didn’t mean to do that. Dr. Kallonia said she was going to play too, did she get her autotuner to work yet?”

“You were on a roll, Dameron,” Kallonia said, and she was about ten feet away at the nearest power port, and her auto-tuner was visibly lit up all green. “I wasn’t going to interrupt.”

He finished the finger-picked phrase and immediately began to strum the rousing “Never No More” chorus. “Well, come on now,” he said, “don’t leave me hanging.”

Kallonia sighed fondly at him, and he had never caught quite so clearly that sense of fond resignation at his antics; usually she was terse when she patched him up, and lately she’d just been quiet while she checked his eyes, and he wasn’t sure he was prepared for that insight that perhaps she actually was fond of him. She picked up her harp and joined in, and they went straight into the chorus to start off, because everyone knew the chorus. Even Finn knew the chorus. He reached over and poked Finn with his foot, and jerked his head, and Finn caught on and sang along.

 

 

He didn’t know until he saw it again in the wild that BB-8 had filmed it, that opening medley. The version that got shared around opened with him glancing over offscreen, saying, “Do they still play that one?” with a snap of sarcasm he hadn’t realized he was deploying in the moment, and going into For The Republic. From BB-8’s point of view, Poe filled the screen, watching his own fingers on the frets, smiling or grimacing a little as he made his way through the first verse, eyebrows pulled together engraving a deep line down his brow ridge. His face tightened through the chorus, and he knew that was as he’d noticed the crying lieutenant, and then he reached the verse and he hadn’t realized his own expression had been so fucking desolate as he’d sung it.

He shifted position slightly, or BB-8 did, pulling back just a little bit, and the Academy sticker on the guitar’s body slid into view, and the scrawl of his name across the edge of the sticker, from back when at the Academy you had to label literally everything or you’d never get it back. He let his breath out, knowing that had just upped the bounty on him by a whole fuckload. But that wasn’t new. It was already a pretty high one. Fuck it. He looked so-- he hadn’t realized it, he looked absolutely gutted by the last repetition of For The Republic, he had thought he was managing to sing it pretty straightforwardly.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he said, and everyone turned to look at him; it was a news holo, and his performance was in it as a commentary on how it had become so popular on the holo exchanges.

“Good thing you upgraded that droid’s camera as soon as you had a chance,” Snap Wexley said. “I figured you were being a vain motherfucker, but--”

Poe shrugged. Onscreen, his voice cracked on the last repetition of _for the Republic_ , and he flinched now, knowing everyone in the room was looking at him now. The holovid went all the way through his segue into the I Am Undone song, and stars, his emotion was so naked on his face, he looked so personally fucking betrayed.

“That was so fucking brilliant,” Arana said. “When you did that I was like-- yes, yes, that’s it exactly. You’re a fuckin’ genius, Poe.”

“Your bounty’s half a million credits now,” Finn said.

Poe let his breath out in a sigh. “Do they up it by, like, a tenth-credit every time the holo gets played again?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Finn said, catching on to the tilt of Poe’s mouth.

“Then let’s play it on repeat,” he said. “I meant every fuckin’ word.”

 


	6. Dear Someone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn laughed, blindingly delighted, and kissed him again, which was fucking ruthless of him, like a bombing run straight across the surface of Poe’s brain, and there was that breathless long moment of frozen stillness and then everything just lit up, washed out all the sensors, fucking obliterated the terrain and left Poe blind and steering on instinct, like you do, you just have to keep moving or the explosion obliterates you too, and as it is the shockwave’s gonna catch you, you’ve got to try to be pointed in a direction so it pushes you away and keeps you moving instead of tumbling you down and taking you out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song for this one is Gillian Welch's [Dear Someone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_SbWzbjueQ), because it's about as sweet as I could manage to be.  
>  _One little star, smiling tonight knows where you are_  
>  Stay, little star, steady and bright to guide me afar  
> Rush, little wind, over the deep for now I've begun  
> Hurry and take me straight into the arms of my dear someone  
> Hurry and take me into the arms of my dear someone

 

Helping collate reports of possible First Order outposts was a good job for Finn, he appreciated that intellectually, but in practice it just made him sick to sit there and comb through and look for familiar patterns. He was best suited for it, but he didn’t like it.

That morning he’d pointed out a likely outpost for the Stormtrooper cadet program, based on traffic patterns and what they could establish was on the cargo manifests of the resupply ships. It had taken hours of sifting, and mostly Connix had uncovered the patterns: Finn had only made the final determination on its specific nature, and he wasn’t sure they’d needed to know in that much detail. (It was the proportions of the nutrients in the food that tipped him off. He’d never worked in the nutrition department but he’d studied up on the guidelines out of curiosity, and he knew how they mixed the synthsust; there was a different formula if it was for cadets under 13, and it called for a whole lot more of a really specific ingredient. He didn’t know what the thing was, but he recognized the name on the cargo manifests of several of the ships.)

But it of course had led to a lot of questions about his experiences, and while it wasn’t that he was ashamed of any of it, it started to upset him a little to have to try to anticipate which aspects of his experiences were going to make everyone give him wide-eyed looks.

The General had caught on, she must have, because she was the one who had cut off Connix and Prindel’s horrified interrogation of him. “We should probably collect this information in an organized, formal fashion,” she said, “so that we can sift through it later for intel we’ll need,” and had directed Connix toward creating a framework of questions in order to come up with a more coherent big picture at a later time.

Finn was grateful she hadn’t pointed out that they were upsetting him. He knew she’d noticed, and the others hadn’t. He shouldn’t be upset, they were just things that had happened. It was just useful intel. But he didn’t like the way they looked at him; somehow, to them, there was nothing strange about forcing children to sleep in individual beds from age five onward, but they had seemed utterly appalled by the fact that they’d had to sleep in shifts and so Finn had spent most of his seventh year of life on a nocturnal schedule. He couldn’t see any rhyme or reason to what they thought unexceptional or horrifying. He hadn’t minded sleeping during the day, but he’d missed his bedmates terribly; he _still_ preferred not to sleep alone. And when he’d told them the weird ingredient he recognized from the cargo manifests was for “grower formula” synthsust they’d all, even the General, looked like he’d told them they fed ground-up _people_ or something to the babies.

Kids were supposed to grow. That wasn’t weird. That wasn’t gross. Was it? Why would it be? It would be grotesque if the children were malnourished, if their growth was deliberately stunted. The point of this was that they weren’t, it wasn’t; Finn was perfectly average-sized and the picture of health, and this discovery just indicated that at least the First Order hadn’t changed in that one matter.

Well, whatever the General had figured out from his expression, she’d put him onto a different task for now, and he was much happier; away from the others, he was sitting by himself in a corner behind her desk, helping organize tables of data to determine priorities for expenditures on the next couple of resupply runs for this base and one other. He was pretty sure she wanted his analysis on where there were clearly bribes being paid that weren’t being recorded, so he was keeping a separate tally of those patterns on a scrap of flimsi on the table as he went, but for the most part he was working up a nice presentable report to hand off to the logistics department. (The bribes report was going to be made orally to the General at some point when no one else was in earshot, because he knew she wasn’t going to get the wrong idea from it, but he wasn’t sure about anyone else.)

One by one everyone else left, and eventually Finn looked up from being a little lost in his work to realize no one was in the room with him except for the General. She was sitting with her feet curled under her, sideways at her desk and absorbed in her datapad. She clocked his movement, though, and glanced up, and seemed to come back to herself a little bit.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

He nodded, not sure how to describe it. “I uh,” he said, and waved a hand. “Think I’m about halfway done.”

“Oh, I don’t mean the report,” Organa said. She sat up a little straighter, but she still had her feet tucked up underneath herself, and she looked very small and the opposite of commanding. “I have no doubt you’ll complete it in a timely fashion to my satisfaction, you do excellent work. I mean in general, how are you adjusting to your new lifestyle?”

“Oh,” Finn said. He considered, for a moment, how thoroughly unlike Captain Phasma the General was, and how she was not asking him for quite the same thing as Phasma was when she asked for a status report. He smiled. “I like it here. I don’t understand the food and I’m not up to speed on all the rules of behavior but I am finding out that people are people and generally can be counted on do to approximately similar things in similar situations.”

“Good,” she said. “I see you and Dameron are still getting along really well.”

“Yeah,” Finn said, grinning, but it faded as he considered it. “Are we?”

Organa’s eyebrows went up. “I assumed so,” she said. “Why, have you quarreled?”

“No, no,” Finn said hastily, “no, it’s not-- it’s just that I’m worried I’m missing something.”

“Missing something,” Organa said, tilting her head a little. It made her look like a little grandmother from a propaganda holovid, the sort of lovely old woman meant to evoke Hearth and Home, even though Finn had never had and would never expect to have either of those things or a grandmother either. He had never really truly considered before how bizarrely hollow a lot of First Order propaganda was, predicated on values that its soldiers could clearly never actually experience themselves.

“Yeah,” Finn said, trying to think how to explain himself. “It just-- the relationship we actually have and the relationship everyone else seems to assume that we have are not at all the same, and I don’t understand why that is, exactly, and I assume there’s some factor that I just don’t know about yet and so am not taking into account.”

“I had heard,” Organa said, looking interested, “a rumor that you were sleeping in his bed, but I had assumed it was gossip.”

Finn shook his head. “It turns out I’ve never slept alone in a room before,” he said, “and I didn’t think that was unusual, but apparently it is. Most of your people sleep alone. Which in theory is fine, but in practice, if you’re accustomed to the sounds of other people breathing, it’s deeply unnerving to be alone in a dark room.”

“Ohhh,” Organa said, clearly having a similar realization to the one Poe had had.

“That’s what Poe said,” Finn said. “And so he invited me to sleep in his bed, it being the middle of the night when he found me wandering around, and it immediately solved my sleeping problems. He’s a restless sleeper but that’s nothing compared to how I was just lying awake all night, before. But here’s the thing. In a social group where everyone sleeps alone, sleeping in someone’s bed _means_ something.”

“It does,” Organa confirmed. “It’s… practically unheard of for two unrelated people of compatible sexual orientations to sleep in the same bed and not have sex.” She tilted her head a little, peering down her nose. “And to us, there’s no taboo against same-gender sexual relationships, though I’m aware there are in some cultures.”

Finn considered that. “I never heard of a taboo like that,” he said, a little wondering. “I’ve heard of taboos where you can’t have sexual relations with anyone _but_ your own chromosomal sex, but I only know of those applying in cases where they didn’t have adequate contraceptive supplies. Why ever would you have a taboo the other way?”

“It’s not my place to speculate,” Organa said. “Different cultures have many beliefs, and it’s not my place to judge them.”

Finn nodded, considering that. “Then Poe wouldn’t consider it taboo to have sexual contact with another man,” he said. He really hadn’t thought so, but it was still worth confirming.

“No,” Organa said. “Not at all. Regardless of taboo, some people don’t incline that way.” She paused, frowning. “Come to think of it, though, he’s had boyfriends, in the past, it’s not that either. To my knowledge he has no particular inclination for any gender over another.”

“So it’s just me,” Finn said, and it hurt, and he hadn’t expected that. He had to sit with that a moment, before he could look up at her again. “I mean. Just because I’m not categorically an unacceptable sexual partner by taboo or inclination, doesn’t mean that I’m individually, _personally_ acceptable.”

When he could finally make himself look up, Organa was shaking her head very slightly. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think most people are inclined to believe the rumors about you two not because you sleep in his bed, but because of how enamored of you he seems. Sure, he cares for a lot of people and puts himself out to take care of them, but he does all of that for you and also watches you all the time and just in general seems much more attentive to you than he is to most people. I wouldn’t at all say that he’s disinterested.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then her expression shifted and she looked almost guilty. “Not that, um, I participate in gossip like that, of course.”

“Of course,” Finn said, a spark of amusement lightening his mood for a moment. It was replaced with a painful little stab of hope, though. “So then— I don’t know how this works, then. If we were Stormtroopers I would have just put my hand down his pants by now, but we’re not— we weren’t allowed to have anything besides that. It’s more complicated here but it’s also _allowed_ to be.” The crudeness was a little bit of a daring gambit, but Organa seemed not to be unduly put out by it, and in fact smiled.

She shook her head a little, looking wistful. “We don’t have a good way of doing it,” she said, and leaned forward a little. “There’s no substitute for talking it out, unfortunately. I can’t offer anything besides that advice. He may think you have a pre-existing relationship with Rey?” She tilted her head inquisitively.

“Oh,” Finn said, and his stomach sank. Well. It wasn’t that he didn’t want— He hadn’t thought that through. If he had one, could he then not have the other?

He had not considered this. He hadn’t gotten past the thrilling thought that he might be allowed to enter into something lasting, to get to where that might mean choosing not to.

“Or,” Organa continued, “the thing is, Poe has had several very serious relationships in his life that ended badly. He may be too frightened of being hurt again to want to open himself to that kind of thing.”

“Oh,” Finn said. He hadn’t considered that, either. He didn’t think of Poe as a frightened sort of person, but, well, it was the frightened ones who were the bravest, and _that_ , Poe was.

“But I’m a meddling old woman,” Organa said, leaning over and putting her hand on Finn’s arm. “And I don’t really know any of these things. You’re going to have to talk to him. That’s the only thing you can do. I’m just saying to you, don’t leave it up to him. He may be waiting for _you_ to say something.” She squeezed his arm. “Or _do_ something.”

 

________________

 

________________

 

 

Of course Pava was standing there when BB-8 decided to confront Finn. “The newer kids need more time in the simulators,” she said. “I know you’re a huge fan of as much real spacetime as possible but we just don’t have the fuel.”

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Yeah.” He grimaced.

“Simulators aren’t all bad,” BB-8 offered, bumping against Poe’s leg.

“No, they’re not,” Poe said. “I mean. They’re better than nothing. I’ve done a ton of time in simulators. They’re just. They’re definitely not everything and they give you a false sense of security.”

“We’re after muscle memory reflexes,” Pava said. “That’s the whole point.”

“Yes,” Poe said, “I know that, but the sooner you can get real spacetime, the more focused you can--” BB-8 let out a beep-shriek and took off, and Poe turned in alarm to see what the hell ey could possibly have seen-- the shriek hadn’t been alarm, but excitement, perhaps, something intense but not distressed. “What the fuck.”

Finn. _Fuck_. _Shit._ _Damn it_. Finn was standing clutching an insulated beverage container to his chest and BB-8 was assaulting him, smacking him in the calves to aggressively herd him toward Poe.

“No no no no,” Poe said, “oh fucking hell, BB, don’t _ram_ people!”

“Jacket Thief,” BB-8 was saying, “Poe thinks he is too old for you to put your extensions in his ports and this is an erroneous belief! You must discuss this matter! He is less than ten years older than you chronologically, that is too small a difference for it to be significant in your species!”

Of fucking course Pava heard that, BB-8’s beeps tended to carry, and Poe groaned out loud. “I was trying to shut BB up,” he muttered to her, “and I told em we were chronologically incompatible because I thought ey might buy that, and holy _shit_ , droids are intractable.”

“Ah,” Pava said, and yeah, Finn was wearing the jacket, “Jacket Thief. You know, he probably _would_ be amenable to an arrangement with his extensions and your ports.”

“Shut up,” Poe said, as sincerely as he’d ever said anything in his life. “Please, I _beg_ you, shut up.”

Finn stumbled into range and Poe grabbed his arm and put himself between BB-8 and Finn’s knees. “Beep,” Poe said, “stop it.”

“That little droid really hates me,” Finn said, clutching his drink and looking harried.

“No ey doesn’t,” Pava said, very very amused. _Shit._ Poe should have been nicer to her. He wasn’t sure how he could have been, nothing came to mind, but surely there was something he could have done in the past to make her incline more toward mercy now. Too late; she was going to dump him right in it. “Do you not— you don’t know any Binary?”

“It’s all beeps to me,” Finn said.

“Put. Your extensions. In his ports!” BB-8 said, very slowly and clearly, with much emphasis.

“That’s not how human courtship works,” Pava said to BB, more kindly than she could have.

Poe sighed and rubbed his face, trying and failing to brace himself. He wasn’t sure which eventuality would be more humiliating, Finn being horrified at the thought of a sexual relationship, or maybe being into it, and either way it was absolutely not the kind of conversation he wanted to have in public. “I tried explaining that.”

“Courtship,” Finn said, alarmed, and fuck, that was it, that was the fat in the fire, and Poe grimaced, a little queasy. “BB-8, I’m flattered, but I really don’t think that’d work out? I don’t think you’re that kind of droid? I’m definitely not that kind of person.”

“Not _my_ ports,” BB-8 trilled, so exasperated ey was rolling back and forth in tiny oscillations. “I don’t have the right attachments!”

Pava gave Poe a look, and Poe scrunched up his face, bracing for it, and with unexpected kindness she said, “BB, this is the kind of discussion humans have in private. It embarrasses us to discuss it publicly. You don’t want to hurt Dameron, do you? Look, that’s a distress face.”

Poe pulled his grimace down into a pout, and BB-8 turned to regard him with intense focus. “Why doesn’t Jacket Thief understand me?” BB-8 whined, genuinely upset.

“He hasn’t had a chance to learn yet,” Poe said, moved by BB-8’s unhappiness, even through his own cringing distress. A lot of people didn’t understand Binary, but BB-8 consistently underestimated how difficult it was for non-mechanicals to learn to understand it. “They don’t have astromechs like you in the First Order, he’s had no training. You know, I bet he’d love to learn.”

“ _That_ sort of thing,” Pava said, “it _is_ acceptable to discuss in public.”

Poe reached out without looking and clasped her shoulder gratefully, and she laughed. “Yeah,” Finn said, “hey, teach me beeps, B, I want to learn beeps.”

BB-8 spun to focus eir sensors fully on Finn, considering him in detail. “Affirmative,” ey trilled, suddenly extremely cheerful.

 

Next supply run, Poe brought Pava a bottle of the Dandoran liqueur she liked. It was a pain in the butt to get, but he owed her one. He meant to just leave it in her hut, but she was there, and gave him a strange look. “What on earth is this for?” she asked suspiciously.

He’d been hoping to avoid that. “Just,” he said, “thanks for being nice.”

She blinked at him. “Nice about what?”

“With all the awkward shit,” he said. “BB-8 and the droid conspiracy to ensure I never get laid again. You really could have dumped me in it and you didn’t, and I appreciate that.”

“Do you really want Jacket Thief to put his extensions in your ports?” Pava asked.

Poe rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. “I know I don’t want my droid to be the one to ask him that.”

Pava made a face. “He really is going to learn Binary, I helped him configure the holos for the training course.”

“Yeah,” Poe said. “I’ll-- deal with that.” He’d have to make himself get past the awkwardness and just warn Finn. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

“You don’t really think you’re too old for him, do you?” Pava asked. “You were just saying that, right?”

“Am I not?” Poe bit his lip. He did want Finn. But he didn’t feel like he could possibly keep him. “He’s only twenty-three.”

“So am I,” Pava said.

He’d known that. Had he known that? He considered it. Pava’s eyes went a little wide. “Dameron,” she said, “if you weren’t in my chain of command I would have shown up naked in your bed within like two weeks of joining up. Trust me, you’re _not_ too old.”

He stared at her, trying in alarm to figure out if she were serious. “I, uh.”

“Relax,” she said. “Most of us get over our crush on you within a couple of months, or at least learn to work around it, but I’m just saying. If you ever need someone to handle your extensions and ports and whatnot, there are plenty of us who’d volunteer.”

Certainty coalesced, and he laughed. “You’re yanking my stabilizers,” he said. “Stars, I _believed_ you for a second there. That’s mean.”

“I’m not messing with you,” she said. “There’s a training holo on the topic. We have like, support group meetings. _Ackbar_ has attended.”

Okay, actually, Poe had noticed Ackbar tended to get a little handsy sometimes. No, he was refusing to entertain this, she was _absolutely_ messing with him. He laughed instead. “Thank you,” he said, “again, you’re a treasure, Pava.”

“I’m really not kidding,” she said, deadpan and earnest. “There’s really an instructional holovid.”

He shook his head at her fondly, and went along the path to his own hut, still laughing once in a while. A holovid. Ackbar. Pava was such a comedian.

 

 

The supply run, a good one funded by a sympathetic Senator, occasioned feasting and merriment, and much rejoicing. All of Poe’s baby pilotlings (and some of them were technicianlings, more had glommed on to him than strictly made sense, except that they were nobody’s problem, exactly, and he was the closest thing to in charge of them of anybody, he supposed, even if it was bewildering) ate and drank and were merry and generally behaved themselves, if rambunctiously.

“Are these all your kids, Poe?” the General asked, sitting down next to him. Her expression was one of gentle teasing, and he took it as such.

“I mean,” Poe said, “I guess I used to get around, but I really didn’t think it was _that_ long ago.” He made a point of gesturing at some of the older newbies, some of whom were pushing thirty.

Close to his own age, but more crucially, close to _her_ son’s age, and perhaps that was sore territory. Well, she’d started it. But she only smiled, and patted his hand. “Time flies,” she said. “I felt the same way, at your age.”

All the pilotlings within earshot had stopped to stare wide-eyed at the General, and she smiled beatifically at them. “You know, Dameron may be a hotshot,” she said, “but he does have excellent navigation. He won’t steer you wrong.”

“He’s taken pretty good care of me,” Finn offered. He was really the ringleader, and Poe knew Organa hadn’t missed that. He was destined for command. A better trajectory than pilot, for sure; longer-lived, among other things.

“He’s taken good care of me too,” Organa said fondly. And then she asked each of them how they were doing, and what they thought of life among the rebels, and whether they liked the food, and what their favorite food was, and Poe rested his chin in his hand and admired her work. Because, this was the thing, she was absolutely sincere.

He’d already proven over and over that he’d die for her, but shit like this just made him pleased with his life choices.

By the time the feast broke up, Poe was definitely completely stone sober. He made his way out of the hall, past furtive, giggling figures he knew were his various pilotlings all hooking up with one another and various others. He didn’t do anything so elderly as to admonish them to be careful; he just kept himself to himself and went off down the path toward his dwelling hut. He had seen Finn get pulled off into a group of young folks, particularly one of the quartermaster’s cronies who tended to follow Finn around a lot with heart-eyes. Poe empathized with her, and did not acknowledge the little twist of jealousy in his chest. That was the sort of thing Finn should be getting up to, not wasting his time in the boring bed of a fucked-up broken old pilot whose nerve was shot.

Poe lay down in bed with a holobook, and prepared to lie awake half the night pretending not to be jealous. But Finn came in through the door after hardly any time at all.

Poe looked up from the holobook in surprise as Finn entered, and he must have smiled or something because Finn’s expression went kind of-- wobbly, then smoothed into a bright grin. “Hey,” Poe said. “I figured-- there was a lot of youthful giggling going on, I figured you were in on it.” He gestured, wiggling his fingers and circling his arm. “All the giggling and such.”

“It was fun,” Finn said. “I mean, who doesn’t love a party?” He shucked his shoes off and came in, rubbing his hand across the close-cropped fuzz of his hair to dislodge raindrops. They glittered in the indirect light from the desk lamp.

“Ah,” Poe said. “But the rain did start after all. I hadn’t noticed.” He’d been absorbed enough in the book after all that he hadn’t picked up on the soft sounds of the water starting to fall. He grimaced. That explained it: who’d want to fuck drunkenly in the bushes in the rain? “That’s the start of the wet season I think. Welcome to three months of terrible hair.”

Finn laughed, a bright and beautiful laugh, and he was such a bright and beautiful boy, Poe’s chest hurt with it. “I don’t think your hair could ever look terrible,” he said.

Poe snorted. “You haven’t seen what rain does to it,” he said. He switched the holobook off, and slid down in the bed— he’d had his back braced against the headboard-- to stretch, shoving his arms up over his head and arching his back to unlock his shoulder blades. He yawned, and subsided, tugging his shirt down where it had ridden up, and Finn was watching him. “What?”

“Nn,” Finn said, and stopped himself. He stepped closer, head a little tilted, watching Poe closely. “So um.”

“What?” Poe asked again, rolling over and sitting up. “Did you have a falling-out with someone?” he went on, suddenly concerned.

“No,” Finn said. “I haven’t argued with anybody. I--” He seemed to reach a decision. “So here’s the thing. You and I, we talk about all kinds of things, and you are so quick to tell me what the normal thing is, around here, and so on-- but you never tell me anything about yourself, you never tell me what you like or you want.”

Poe’s mouth opened of its own accord, and it took a moment for him to close it, because for stars’ sake of _course_ Finn wasn’t hitting on him, _get ahold of yourself_. “I tell you all the time what I like,” Poe said. “I just-- I have a responsibility, you know, not to let my biases get in the way of giving you a fair introduction to society around here. So I try not to make my opinions a big deal, so you can form your own.”

“I get that,” Finn said gently, coming closer. “But I mean. I _want_ to know what _you_ like, Poe.” He was really close now, and Poe had to tilt his head back a little to look up at him. Lit from the side like this, just by the desk lamp, the edges of his round features were just limned by the yellowish light, highlighting the texture of his young smooth skin and the crisp edges of his carefully-kept hair, the sweep of his eyelashes and the soft-looking corner of his mouth.

 _Pull yourself the_ fuck _together_ , _Poe Dameron_. “I guess it’s sort of condescending to still be acting like I have to teach you things,” Poe said, and he had to make himself close his mouth again. He was about to drool on this kid, he wanted him so bad. “When, like, the first thing I learned about you is that you’re a man capable of making really high-pressure decisions quickly. Obviously, it doesn’t take you long to learn what you need to know.”

That soft-looking corner of Finn’s mouth curved up a little, and Poe really needed to stop staring at it. “Okay but you’re still not telling me,” Finn said. “Don’t think I don’t get that you’re using it to keep your distance.”

This time Poe couldn’t close his mouth. “I,” he said after a moment, “well,” and the lack of any hard consonant sounds meant that still didn’t shut his fucking mouth.

Finn came a little closer, and Poe had to tilt his head back to look up at him. “You look like I just punched you,” Finn said. He put his finger under Poe’s chin, like maybe he was trying to shut Poe’s mouth, which, fair, it needed shutting, and Poe shut his mouth, but Finn kept pulling a little, gentle pressure, and Poe tipped his head up like he seemed to want, and oh fuck, Finn was bending down toward him, fuck, _fuck_ , Finn’s hand slid around to the back of Poe’s neck, and his face was too close to focus on now, and muscle memory took over and closed Poe’s eyes for him, tilted his head a little for him, opened his mouth a little for him--

\-- and Finn kissed him, gentle teasing pressure of lips, which were as soft as they looked and more-- and a tentative brush of tongue, _holy shit, yes_ , Poe’s whole body went missing and he was just the nerves of his mouth, lit up and keyed straight into the sudden wild hammering of his heart.

Did he have lungs? He had lungs. Probably. Maybe. There they were. Hands-- no? Yes?

Thighs, he had thighs, because Finn had stepped between them, solid solid body, so warm and so solid, all those nerves lit up too, Poe was no longer sure he had lungs, they weren’t working.

Finn saved his life (again) by breaking the contact of their mouths and pulling away a little, and Poe tried and failed to pull himself together but he got enough to figure out that he had a face, Finn was cradling it between both his hands, and smiling down at him like Poe had done something noteworthy. “I knew it,” Finn said, “I knew you had that in you.”

Witty comeback, it was certainly time for a witty comeback, but speech was beyond Poe, as was _shutting his fucking mouth_ , but he realized eventually that he had hands, he had them wrapped around Finn’s forearms like he was holding himself up with them or something, and indeed, he was, because he had apparently forgotten how gravity worked planetside.

“I’m a disaster,” he said faintly, disbelieving his own state, and Finn laughed, devastatingly sweet-bright-brilliant and so close-range.

“You want— this?” Finn asked, a pinch of uncertainty between his eyebrows. “I’m not trying to—”

“Yes I do,” Poe said, “ _fuck_ , hell _yes_ , Finn.”

Finn laughed, blindingly delighted, and kissed him again, which was fucking ruthless of him, like a bombing run straight across the surface of Poe’s brain, and there was that breathless long moment of frozen stillness and then everything just lit up, washed out all the sensors, fucking obliterated the terrain and left Poe blind and steering on instinct, like you do, you just have to keep moving or the explosion obliterates you too, and as it is the shockwave’s gonna catch you, you’ve got to try to be pointed in a direction so it pushes you away and keeps you moving instead of tumbling you down and taking you out.

When the sensors came back online Finn was in Poe’s bed, hands still framing Poe’s face, broad shoulders blocking the light, and Poe had apparently gotten some of his reflexes back online because he had his knees bracketing Finn’s hips and his hands fisted in the back of Finn’s shirt, good going autopilot, that’s why we practice so much, because if you get your muscle memory right it’ll get you out of all kinds of scrapes you just don’t have time to think your way out of.

Only there were no sex simulators, so you had to practice all of that the hard way. Or well. Maybe there were. Poe wouldn’t know. He didn’t always know things. He didn’t have to act like he knew either. Because muscle memory will get you through a lot, if you just keep a goal in mind and keep moving.

“Pull yourself together, Dameron,” he said, staring up at Finn, who was looking at him like he’d just been told a delightful secret.

“You can keep tryin’,” Finn said, “but I’m pretty determined to take you apart.”

That was a good one, Poe observed distantly, before everything washed out again. It was a really long time since he’d picked anybody up, since he’d light-heartedly bantered his way into sex, he’d put all that behind him, years ago, he’d settled into dedicated study of just one person, he’d narrowed his world down to just one person, and then the sensors had washed out and on the other side there hadn’t even been wreckage. Just, the whole world, gone, the whole world gone out from under him, and— the sensors had never properly come back online, and he’d limped out of there and let muscle memory carry him through but some of that hadn’t come back either.

It stuttered now, and belatedly kicked out a phrase, a response, that’s how banter worked, take you apart, “Won’t take mm--much,” Poe said, slurring a little, already, his body was— going on without him, apparently, he was, maybe he was dying, or having a seizure or something, he didn’t know, he just— he really didn’t know, it was like he’d never done this before or something.

No, Poe remembered what it had been like when he’d never done this before, the fumbling and the excruciating self-consciousness. This was like— he wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t that. He was the opposite of self-conscious. He had no idea what the fuck his self was doing, or where it was, or what it intended, or if it even had intentions.

All he knew was that Finn was there, blocking out everything else, filling up every sensor array and sparking them out, even the ones that Poe had figured didn’t work anymore, those were lighting up too, washing out to static and then coming back down into simple overload. There was— skin, on skin, he’d seen Finn’s skin before but he hadn’t felt it, not really, not like this, he had such soft skin— there was heat, hot blood behind skin, hot mouth, wet— nerves— body— sensors—

Poe had had an illustrious youth among his peers, particularly when it came to bedding them. He’d had a reputation for being suave, for being charming, but he’d never been other than totally sincere. He’d given of himself, he’d been amply reciprocated, he’d been good at this and he’d been genuine at this, but he’d never— _lost_ himself, at this, not like this, not— not even to her, she’d wrapped him up but it had been so mutual, it had been quiet, it had been sweet, it had been steady and sturdy and incremental and reliable and inexorable. And now, he knew, it was that he was broken, it was that so much of him had vanished in that bright hot wash across the sensors, in that endless instant, wrapped up in her and she was gone with it. He just didn’t have much left, and what was left he’d figured hadn’t been enough to offer anything to anyone, and certainly not enough to enter into something reciprocal. When one had nothing to give, it was unethical to take, as well.

Finn said things, and Poe didn’t hear them; Finn did things, and Poe couldn’t parse them; he only existed, he was only experience, he was muscle memory and reflex and an eternal instant scraping along the edge of orgasm before every sensor blew screaming past static into whiteness and silence, no attitude or orientation, no gravity or trajectory, and beyond panic there was a serenity you could float in. Poe had always figured he’d die like that; the adrenaline would spike but then you were past it and nothing could reach you anymore, and you just— ceased.

But he didn’t cease.

He was breathing, and after a little of that he blinked, and there was his ceiling, just where he’d left it. He had eyes, and they focused; he had a mouth, he was panting through it. He closed his mouth and swallowed, his throat was dry from breathing hard or maybe screaming. He was— he had a body, and it was mostly there, that he could tell, and it didn’t have clothes on it, and that was fine, that was, he should think something about this, but mostly he had a bed and he was in it and he had a Finn in his bed, and Finn was pressed against his side, breathing hard, naked too, soft skin, Poe’s hand was trailing itself up and down Finn’s back along the side without his conscious direction, autopilot again, good going.

“Hey,” Finn said, breathless. “That was pretty great.”

Poe pondered the concept of translating thoughts to words, but it was more an abstract notion than anything he’d actually be able to do, on his own, so it kind of trailed away without anything coming of it.

Finn’s hand stroked across Poe’s midsection, came up to his shoulder, came up to his face. “Everyone kept telling me you were such a legendary master of romance or whatever, and there you were makin’ those eyes at me, but whenever I tried to ask you about it you were always just trying to give me advice instead. Why’d you work so hard at keeping me distracted?”

Words, they were a thing a mouth would make. Poe blinked slowly, found his mouth from the inside, breathed through it, opened it, closed it, but he wasn’t really much closer to making words with it than he had been. After a moment Finn laughed, and propped his head on his bent arm to look at Poe more directly, tracing his thumb along Poe’s lower lip, which made Poe blink rapidly and squint as his brain flooded with sensation again.

“Pull yourself together, Dameron,” Finn said, voice rich with kind amusement.

Good reminder. Pull yourself together. That was a thing you could do. Poe blinked again, swallowed, remembered how to move his mouth, right, you had to breathe out while talking. “Yeah,” he said. A word. That was a word. Good. He could make words.

“Man,” Finn said, “you’re really somethin’, they weren’t kidding.” He gathered Poe up and tugged him into a close embrace, and Poe tucked his head into Finn’s shoulder and shivered. “I got you,” Finn murmured, and sorted out the blankets, pulling them up and wrapping them around, and Poe let the familiar scent and warmth of Finn’s body plus the unexpected lassitude of sex and hormones wash him under.

 

_____________

 

_____________

 

 

Leia had never really been one for meditating, the way the Jedi were. Sometimes, though, she would sit quietly in her quarters and drink tea and reflect on things. If she was very calm and very still, as was easier to do the older she got, she could extend her attention outward and feel, as if she were suspended in lake water and feeling the weeds come up from the bottom of the lake, faint brushes of the energy of the people around her.

She could extend this reach outward quite a distance, and over the years sometimes had been able to make herself believe she could feel her brother’s energy, faint but recognizable. She had never been able to pinpoint a direction. Now, knowing the direction, she had been able to follow the spark of Rey’s life force, and she knew, now, that it had always been true. She’d always been able to feel Luke. Now she could be certain of it, because he reflected some of Rey back at her.

She’d certainly felt his strong emotion when Rey had landed and he’d seen her. That was undeniable. And ever since that moment, whenever she sat like this, she could feel him.

She’d also always been able to find Han. That, she’d never doubted. No matter where he was, she’d always been able to find him. Again, useless for getting a sense of his physical direction at any kind of distance, but always invaluable in knowing that he’d come back. Because he’d always come back.

Now he was an endless gap, and there was nothing that would ever fill it. Still she sat like this, and looked for him anyway, because it was partly habit, and partly the duty of mourning. You could not look away from such things; you had to stare right at them, and keep the feeling familiar.

She still looked for the space Alderaan had occupied, as well, and she found it, every time. It still echoed, every time. She touched it gently, every time, and ran her metaphorical, non-embodied fingers over it, and shivered a little at the pain, every time.

It was part of her, and part of her was this duty, never to forget.

Various other of her friends, she could see this way as well. Well— friends. Leia Organa did not have friends, as such. She could see her son, though he was shielded, crystalline, impervious to her touch; but she knew that he lived, and that was important. The pain it gave her not to be able to touch him was just as important as the pain of the gaping space of her homeworld, and the yawning abyss that was no longer her husband.

She could also see various of the other people from her life, past and present. Most non-Force sensitive people were indistinct, hard to make out, but some reflected or generated energy in distinctive ways, so she could always make them out. A senator’s aide who had always been friendly, Leia could locate unerringly whenever she laughed, which was often. It was a tiny sparkle, but Leia occasionally saw it, and it pleased her. There were several people who had a similar effect, but that one singular person was the only one Leia could readily, individually identify, because it had happened when she was nearby several times. Others, she could see the thread of their life force go beautifully luminous, and she had still been young enough to be amused by it when she’d recognized what it was: Orgasm. Some specific people, when they reached sexual climax, she could see the change in their life force.

Most of these were not people she knew specifically, but occasionally they were, and it was mostly just sweet now, and less funny. But one of them was, conveniently, Poe Dameron. He’d been about nineteen or twenty when she’d figured it out; she’d been attending a formal event at the Naval Academy facilities, and he’d been attending a less-formal event. She’d sensed the familiar resonance in the Force and had paused, wanting to embarrass the stuffy Naval officer escorting her. When it had turned out to be Poe, luminous and brilliant and completely unashamed as he came out of a maintenance closet straightening his companion’s jacket, she had laughed so hard the officer had thought she was having some sort of fit. (Poe himself had been admirably sanguine about it, but then he may not have realized how clearly she understood what exactly had just transpired.)

But it had meant she could always kind of keep tabs on him, at a distance. And so she knew that while he’d had something of a wild youth, it hadn’t really been all that wild. But things had gotten much quieter in the last couple of years— much, much quieter. To the point that she’d asked BB-8 about it, a few months back. (Sometimes she got lonely in the hours just before dawn and would go visit the astromechs. They made her think of her brother. BB-8 was by far the most personable of them, and less demanding than C-3PO. More discreet, as well.)

BB-8 had confirmed that Poe was not much for dating anymore, not since— before. Leia had a suspicion that her inquiry had pushed BB-8 into researching the topic, and possibly pestering Poe about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to be sorry for that.

And so, as the party went on, as the monsoon season came on, as the revelers dispersed into various shelters to pursue their entertainment, Leia meditated in her quarters, watching the life forces of indistinguishable people sparkle with laughter and illuminate with orgasm and darken with drunken quarrels and blossom into delight.

There, among them, there was Poe, suddenly, radiant and luminous, and she watched him— it was a color or a resonance or something, she knew for certain that it really was him— as he lit up from the inside, and she noted that the life-force thrumming closest to him was distinctive, too.

She recognized that energy, and it confirmed a suspicion for her. Often as he sat concentrating on a task, alone in the room with her, Finn’s energy would grow and hum and solidify as he focused. She had no doubt, now: the former Stormtrooper was Force-sensitive. Not like Rey was, not like Luke was, not like she herself was, but undeniable nonetheless. He wasn’t raw power, wasn’t flashy strength, but he was awake and growing in power by the day, and the more he was allowed to concentrate and follow his interests, the more there was to find, there.

She set the thought aside for now, though, and just let herself bask in the reflected radiance. Those two boys complemented one another well, and she was happy to see them together like this.

 

The next morning Poe was still glowing faintly, and he looked gorgeous with it. She found him sitting in the mess hall in the morning, surrounded by hung-over young new recruits who’d overindulged the night before. He looked as hung-over as they did, but it couldn’t disguise his radiance.

She sat down beside him.“You are a luminous creature,” she said, and all the hung-over new recruits fell silent in awe, staring at her as she put her arm around Poe’s shoulders.

“I mean,” he said, “it’s a gift. You know I come from excellent genetics.”

“Your mother was the most beautiful woman I ever knew,” she said, which startled him. “You look so much like her it hurts sometimes.”

“Who was your mother?” one of the cadets asked, and it struck Leia that these kids were young enough that they might not actually know.

“Shara Bey,” Leia said, affronted. How soon the youth forgot. “The best A-Wing pilot there ever was, and a hero of the Rebellion. Oh, my. It has been so long since she died, they’re starting to forget her. That can’t be, Dameron. That can’t be allowed.” Leia shook her head solemnly. “If only we had more time for history education.”

“Well,” Poe said, “Peazy’s got you dictating those memoirs.”

Leia rolled her eyes.PZ-4CO’s obsession with recording Leia’s personal history had been old pretty much from the day it had started. “Right, right,” she said. “What the world needs is more of me talking.”

“Tell Peazy about Shara Bey,” Poe said, and he was suddenly dead serious. “And Kes Dameron. Before everyone forgets.”

Tuned-in to him as she was, Leia caught his shift in mood. He wasn’t kidding, not at all. “I will,” she said solemnly.

He looked at her for another long moment, and finally made the next connection. “You have a mission for me,” he said.

“I do,” Leia said.

“It’s not a recruiting mission,” Poe said.

“No,” she said.

“But it’s a dangerous one,” he said, because he was pretty good at how these things went.

“It might be,” she hedged.

“Lay it on me,” he said. “I hate to be bored.”

 

________

 

________

 

It wasn’t nearly as complicated or dangerous a mission as the General had made it out to be. Poe wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. The dry air of the cockpit and the relentless pressure of a helmet tamed his hair back into normal enough condition, to say nothing of the brisk action on the destination planet, and he came home feeling almost normal again, despite having taken a knife to the back in the skirmishy bit of the mission that had made Leia so nervous in theory.

He’d take a knife any day, would take a dozen knives any day, over a syringe; these people hadn’t known specifically who he was, so there’d been not so much as a hint of a threat about that sort of thing, and it was an unimaginable relief.

“Oh,” Poe said over his shoulder, realizing why Finn had stopped in the doorway of the infirmary. Poe was facing away from the door, shirtless, waiting for the adhesive to dry where they’d stuck him back together, so all the damage was on display to anyone walking in. Well, facing that way gave the infirmary staff the best light to work in. “It’s minor, don’t worry about it.” Surely Finn had seen a lot of fighting damage in his day, and could see that for himself.

It had been a poor attempt anyway, mostly deflected. Poe’s old jacket would’ve stopped it. But his old jacket had served a far nobler purpose. Finn was wearing it, right now, and _stars_ , but it suited him.

“You’re all bruises,” Finn said quietly, coming around to stand in front of him. He didn’t stay standing, he dropped to a knee, to be the same height as Poe on his low stool.

Poe shrugged, looking down. “It’s all right,” he said, shrugging. He managed to summon a glimmer of mischief, and looked up at Finn. “Even an old man like me can heal something like this.”

“Should’ve taken backup,” Finn said. “You shouldn’t’ve been out there alone.”

It was pretty clearly about Finn not liking his friends going off and leaving him alone. Poe gave him an understanding smile. “I work best like that,” he said. “That’s why they send me on missions like that. Less noticeable if you send a small craft, one person.”

“Nobody to watch your back,” Finn said.

“If shit had really gone wrong, it wouldn’t matter,” Poe said. “Hey. Thanks for worrying about me. I do appreciate the thought. I’m not trying to be a jerk.”

That got a little smile that warmed Poe straight through, and he had to mentally step back a little. Hey there. Whoa there. This kid was a slippery slope.

Probably too late to be worrying about that.

 

This time he kept his head a little more, managed to maybe live up to a shadow of his reputation, bringing Finn skillfully off with his mouth. It had been-- so many years since he’d last done that, and now he didn’t care that Finn put his hands in his hair and messed it all up, pulled it a little too hard, didn’t care; it was so dim a memory, how it used to bother him, but now he just wanted to be touched, kneeling on the woven-grass carpet on the floor of the hut, remembering a time in a hangar once, stone floor and a wall at his partner’s back and footsteps coming, the thrill of it-- a more innocent daring mission than his usual.

Finn was gratifyingly affected, and hauled Poe up onto the bed with shaking arms to half-crush him and overwhelm him in reciprocation; Poe had figured he’d get himself off in like thirty seconds while Finn was recovering, but instead Finn pinned him down and uncoordinatedly mauled him, sweetly, relentlessly, until Poe was shattered and gasping his way through a much more intense orgasm than he’d really been prepared for.

Finn licked his hand off meditatively, and Poe was too fucked-out to even react to that, sleepy and buzzing all over. Finn snuggled up next to him and put his head on Poe’s shoulder. “Okay,” he said, and Poe wondered how anyone could be so wordy after sex; he was better-off this time than last time but he still wasn’t going to win any prizes for witty banter. “So. I’m gonna assume that who does what doesn’t tie in to people’s relative ranks? I hadn’t really-- thought that through? But-- that’s a thing?”

“What,” Poe said, lost. To be fair, he thought, even when he was at his best that sort of thing would floor him.

“Like, who does what to whom,” Finn said. “Because like. Out here people don’t necessarily have ranks.”

“Back up,” Poe said, “I still don’t know what you mean.”

“You outrank me,” Finn said.

“I… no?” Poe blinked at the ceiling. “In like-- in what, in looks,” ( _ha)_ “in age, in net worth, I mean-- what kind of rank are we talking here?”

“Military,” Finn said.

 _Duh._ “Oh,” Poe said. “I uh. I’m not in your chain of command. I kind of. I wouldn’t. We sort of. We frown on people having relations with people who are subordinate to them. It’s inappropriate.” Was that where this was going? He felt like he was missing something.

“Well, right,” Finn said, “you’re not in my-- wait, really? You can’t-- if I were one of your guys you wouldn’t do this?”

“No,” Poe said. “I wouldn’t. I’d-- I mean, if I felt like-- if we both really wanted a relationship, I’d transfer you to be in someone else’s command. I wouldn’t-- if I could give you an order, right, and you’d have to follow it, I wouldn’t ever be sure that you were really having sex with me because you wanted to. I’d always worry that you were doing it because you felt like it was an order.”

Finn sat up. “That’s-- but that’s crazy,” he said. “I just-- I gotta think for a minute about that.”

Poe was suddenly freezing fucking cold, like there was an icicle rammed straight through his gut. “You don’t--” He sat up. “You don’t think I’m ordering you to do this, do you?” He couldn’t quite breathe. No, Finn had started it, had escalated things, but Finn was no fool, he understood politics. “You aren’t-- that’s not what you think, is it? You don’t think you have to do this to curry favor with--” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. He thought he might throw up. “That’s _rape_ , Finn, that’s like-- that’s the _worst possible thing_ I could ever--”

“Whoa, whoa,” Finn said, “whoa, no-- Poe! No. No, I don’t think I have to-- I wouldn’t-- that’s not-- Poe!” He had his arms around Poe now, and pulled him in and kissed him, and Poe had to push him away, but just a little, he didn’t want him to think he was disgusted or something-- it wasn’t Finn’s fault, he didn’t know, and the whole fucking point was that he didn’t know, and Poe was just sick thinking of it.

“No,” Poe said, anguished, “Finn, no, military rank has no bearing on what kind of sex acts people perform for one another, and any suggestion of it is-- it’s taboo, Finn, you don’t force people to have sex with you. Not by strength, not by trickery, not by lies, and definitely, definitely not by military or civilian rank.”

“You guys feel like it’s the same thing?” Finn looked-- not horrified exactly, but sort of uneasy.

“It is,” Poe said. “Same if someone’s not able to consent, to do it anyway is just as bad. If they’re a kid, or if they’re drugged, or if they’re under mind control or something-- or if they’re a kind of xeno that can’t clearly communicate desires to you, you just-- you can’t. You don’t.”

“I get all that,” Finn said. “And like. You don’t _order_ your underlings to have sex with you. Not if they don’t want to. It’s just. If they do, then it’s understood that the senior one gets to-- like, you don’t expect the guy senior to you to suck your dick, you suck his.”

Poe shook his head slowly. “That’s-- not-- no, Finn, we don’t do that.” He closed his eyes a moment. “It doesn’t work that way. People pretend, for fun, like-- if you want to boss someone around in bed, you play a game. And you make a word or a code you can use, so that the person can tell you to stop for real and know you really will. So like. If your game is all you saying _no please stop_ , and they don’t realize you’ve stopped playing, you use the word instead so they know you mean it.” He opened his eyes. “But if it’s real then you can’t do that. The less powerful person can’t really make the more powerful one stop. So that’s-- not okay.”

Finn considered that. “Okay,” he said. “I get it. I think.”

“It’s hot to pretend,” Poe said. “Sometimes. Or like. To get tied up. You know. Stuff like that.” And suddenly the memory of being clamped to a table came back, with Ben fucking Organa in that stupid speeder grille mask rummaging through his fucking brain, and he went tense all over and couldn’t help a shiver.

“Hey, whoa,” Finn said, and slid his hands up Poe’s arms. “Hey.”

“Sorry,” Poe said, inhaling sharply, “that was-- I started thinking about something else.”

“Somebody hurt you,” Finn said, intense, ducking his head a little to catch Poe’s eye.

Poe blinked at him, and it went a long way to melt that metaphorical icicle in his gut. He laughed. “Last time somebody had me clamped to a table, you rescued me.”

Finn’s expression softened, and he moved his hand to the back of Poe’s neck. “You know I hadn’t-- that was spur of the moment, when I realized they’d left me alone with you. I’d never-- really thought about running away, not really, not before then. I just-- when they made us shoot everybody in that camp-- and I thought, I can’t do this, and then-- it all came together out of nothing, all at once.”

Poe leaned forward and kissed him, and held his jaw between his palms, holding his face, savoring his soft mouth. “I know,” he murmured. “I knew it then. You had the look.”

“You’re unreal,” Finn said. “You know that? The more I learn about life as a regular person the more I realize just how fuckin’ unreal you are.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Poe said. He put his head down against Finn’s shoulder. The stim they’d given him to numb the wound was wearing off and he was tired and achy and post-orgasmic and just wanted skin contact. Finn obliged, wrapping warm arms around him.

“I mean you’re something else,” Finn said. “I can’t believe what a good choice I made throwing my lot in with you.”

“You’re smarter than you realize,” Poe said. “But I mean. It’s the hair. Probably.” It was disastrous again; he’d washed it, and had combed it in the shower and just let it dry, so it was tight tight curls but at least they hadn’t been sticking up. Until Finn had put his hands in his hair, and now it was kind of. Well. Sex hair. Which had its own appeal but was not normally what Poe was going for, as an aesthetic. “People trust the hair. Hair like this, it can’t lie.”

“That must be it,” Finn said. He gently pulled Poe down and wrapped him in himself and the blanket.

 

 

Poe heard BB-8 before he saw em, burbling away happily to someone. He couldn’t make out what BB was saying, but ey was animated and cheerful, and he found himself smiling to hear em. The rain hadn’t let up, and the little droid had been uncharacteristically subdued, even putting emself in low-power mode in the corner of the hangar for hours on end. Poe had been on the verge of bringing a pallet in and sleeping next to em, just to cheer em up a little. Maybe he’d do that anyway-- maybe trick some of the little pilotlings into a slumber party or something, cheer up the droids, maybe do something fun with holograms in the dark hangar.

He rounded the corner and there was BB, rolling back and forth a little as ey explained something with a hologram to none other than Finn, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor and watching raptly. “Great,” Poe said, and it was Nunb who heard him this time.

“He’s picking it up quickly,” Nunb said. “Maybe that one’s worth pilot training!”

“I think the General’s got bigger ideas for him,” Poe said. He could see the hologram now was the written notation for the droids’ speech. Innocuous, at least.

“There is no more noble purpose than piloting,” Nunb said, affronted, and Poe was never 100% sure when Nunb was kidding, what with the language barrier and nonhuman facial features making expressions tricky. Also even for a Sullustan Nunb tended toward the deadpan.

“Well, that’s true,” Poe said, “but technically speaking, there are literally-bigger roles to play, so-- I gotta go figure out what the hell BB is telling him, excuse me.”

Finn looked up at Poe’s approach and said, “This is so much easier than I thought!”

“Yeah,” Poe said, “it’s really not hard at all once you get the trick of it.”

“This human is a good human,” BB-8 said earnestly.

Poe grinned down at both of them. Finn glanced back and forth between BB and Poe, and clearly hadn’t quite caught it. “Human,” he said, trying to translate. “Human is--”

“I like you,” BB-8 said to him, slower.

“I like-- something,” Finn said, frowning.

“I like you,” BB-8 repeated.

Poe knelt down next to them, and a grin spread slowly across Finn’s face. “You like me?”

“I like you!” BB-8 said, more emphatic, with a happy little trill.

“That’s great,” Finn said, delighted. “I like you too. Can we hug? Do droids hug?”

“Ey’s a good recipient,” Poe said, “but not so great at giving. You know. Lacking limbs, and all.”

Finn wrapped his arms around BB, gently, tucking his chin around the edge of BB’s head, and hugged em gently. “I’m glad you like me,” Finn said. “I really thought you didn’t, what with the tasering and the shrieking and the bumping and all. I’m glad we could sort this out.”

“Sorry for tasering you,” BB-8 beeped slowly.

“I assume that word I don’t know is taser,” Finn said, slowly unwrapping his arms and looking at BB. BB trilled an affirmative. “It’s all right. I forgive you for tasering me. If I were you I would’ve assumed the worst about me too.”

Poe had heard the Indignant Saga Of The Jacket Thief approximately six dozen times, so he knew when the tasering had happened. He had also heard the Saga Of The Wise And Noble And Kind Scavenger at great length more recently; it was possible Rey was BB-8’s favorite ever human that wasn’t Poe, which was kind of a powerful character endorsement really.

BB-8 turned to regard Poe. “You got a recharge,” ey said slyly.

Poe gave him a stern look. “Maybe,” he said.

BB-8 trilled delightedly. Finn was looking lost, but intent, listening closely as if he’d catch on at any moment. Which, well, he might. “Did he put his extensions in any of your ports?” BB asked eagerly.

“No,” Poe said, still stern. But he couldn’t actually manage to lie. “I. Technically. No.”

“Technically?” BB-8 drew it out, challenging. Poe had spent a great deal of his life trying to learn how to lie convincingly, but he was terrible at it, and even worse when it was someone he knew as well as this.

“Technically speaking,” Poe hedged. He cleared his throat. Technically, he’d put his port on Finn’s extension, but--  “I mean. Beep, don’t do this to me.”

BB-8 rolled over and snuggled up against Finn again, and Finn laughed and put his arms around the droid again. “You’re so sweet,” Finn said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Pretty human,” BB-8 cooed, “rub yourself on my pretty human.”

“What,” Poe said.

“Pretty,” Finn said, “human? Who is a pretty human?”

“My human is the prettiest human,” BB-8 said. “The prettiest! Other droids are jealous, because my pilot is the prettiest one!”

“Your pilot... is the prettiest human,” Finn said, and it was kind of amazing, Poe realized, because he was honestly not getting most of the words and was just filling it in, because he was so used to figuring shit out on the fly, and it was honestly a little breathtaking.

“I don’t know what you’re even talking about,” Poe said, baffled. Droids didn’t care about what humans looked like. He knew they had rivalries, sure; being affiliated with a particularly daring pilot gave you a certain social cachet, among the human and droid mechanics alike, as well as in other social situations. But part of that was predicated on a kind of pity; when your reckless pilot got killed, you’d likely be unsalvageable too.

“Other humans are jealous!” BB-8 said, rolling away a tiny bit from Finn, but only to bump into him again for emphasis. “All of them want to touch my pretty, pretty pilot. He used to let them, but then he stopped because he was sad.” Poe realized BB was speaking slowly and simply. It was cute, but also distressing. “But he lets you touch him, and it makes him happy again.”

“This is all nonsense,” Poe said. “Other droids are absolutely not jealous of you because they think I’m _attractive_.”

“No, no, not nonsense!” BB-8 insisted. “Everyone wants to touch Poe, because he is the prettiest. All of us got together and we tried to figure out what it is that humans get out of all this touching.” Ey was speeding up again, excited.

“Slow down, Finn can’t keep up when your beeps go hypersonic,” Poe said. “Are you telling me that you guys all spend your nights in here trying to figure out how humans mate?”

“Not _how_ ,” BB-8 said crossly, and showed a blip of a holo-porn again, a close-up of a penis or some kind of similar proboscis entering some orifice or other. “We see how, we just don’t know _why_.”

“BB,” Poe said, scandalized.

“What,” Finn said. “Did he just show us _porn_?” That answered a little something about stormtroopers, Poe supposed; they knew what porn was. Unless it was that Finn had learned that here already. Poe was accidentally becoming a pornography anthropologist.

Well, it wasn’t the weirdest thing BB-8’s odd little obsessions had made him learn more than he meant to about.

“Ey did that the other day,” Poe said. “The droids were all trying to figure out just why humans have sex.” He made a wry face. “BB got it into eir head that it’s necessary and if humans don’t do it with a certain regularity then something bad happens to them.”

“Ahh,” Finn said, “then some of the things he’s been saying make more sense.”

“Who’s been saying?” Poe asked, confused by the pronoun. Was there someone else in this conversation? That was just what this conversation did _not_ need, more participants.

“BB,” Finn said. “He’s been going on about-- oh my stars he was giving me sexual instructions. I get it now.”

Poe covered his face with his hands. “Ey was trying to give me instructions as well,” he said.

“Clearly humans derive benefit from this activity!” BB-8 said.

“Shh, shh,” Poe said. “It’s all right, you’re getting fast again. It’s all right, Little Beep. I don’t always take the best care of myself but I do try.”

“Jacket Thief is also a pretty human,” BB-8 said. “All of us droids got together and we analyzed what makes a human pretty to other humans. My pilot is the prettiest one. But you are also pretty, Jacket Thief.”

“That series of noises is my name,” Finn said, “but it doesn’t translate by the chart I have.”

“BB-8 has given you eir own nickname,” Poe said. “Ey likes to give people eir own designations. Ey often just calls me My Pilot.”

“My Pilot is the prettiest human,” BB-8 said. Ey rolled over and bumped into Finn again. “He is daring and skilled and so the mechanics give me preferential treatment but it is also because he is pretty and all the human mechanics want to rub themselves on him.”

“What,” Poe said.

“That’s how sex is done,” BB-8 said. “It is not all extensions and ports. You said those were optional so we did more research. It’s mostly just rubbing, apart from that. You rub yourselves on each other.” BB hesitated, then refocused on Poe, and continued, sly again, “So maybe there weren’t any extensions but you certainly rubbed each other.”

Poe contemplated that for a moment through the haze of his mortification. He had a very long habit of taking the things BB-8 said seriously, even though many people pointed out that the droids’ various artificial intelligences had noticeable faults that made them notably less-sharp than humans. Still, he’d generally found it behooved him to treat BB-8 as a sapient creature, on par with humans, because while BB-8 frequently missed the point, so did a lot of people. Another pilot might have just shut BB up by now, but Poe knew it wasn’t a good idea in the long run to treat your astromech like that. And you never knew what you’d learn if you let em talk.

“There were extensions,” Poe conceded. “That’s-- humanoid males usually. You know.” He cleared his throat. “Extend.”

“Are you giving _him_ sex instructions?” Finn asked.

“If you leave em curious,” Poe said, “ey looks it up, and then you have to deal with the things ey learns. It’s easier to just not lie, Finn.” And… it was probably time to point this out. “By the way, BB’s not a he, ey has no gender. A lot of the droids identify in different ways and a lot of people ignore that but a lot of people also don’t think droids are people. So.” He held out his hand, tipped it back and forth. “It’s less confusing if you don’t call BB ‘he’.”  

Finn blinked, and looked over at BB-8, then back at Poe. “Sorry!” he said to BB. “I never heard that before! I wondered if I was mishearing people! Sorry, BB.”

“That’s okay,” BB squeaked graciously, a little embarrassed. Sometimes the pronoun conversation got dismissed out of hand. It had taken BB a long time to bring it up; Poe had called em “he” for a long time, and had thought “it” was the most proper one, like many people did, like an object, and some droids didn’t mind but BB-8, as eir personality had developed, had kind of started to mind. It had been a big moment when ey’d finally explained it to Poe.

Back in the Fleet, most people had been pretty dismissive of it-- they’d thought it was a joke, or had assumed Poe was only humoring his droid because he was angling for something. Everything in the crowded underfunded little Fleet was always about politics in some way, angling for promotion, making oneself palatable to the promotions boards or cozying up to the civilians who had inevitable input into the disposition of the assignments. It was only really people who knew Poe personally who’d understood that he was sincere. So apart from when BB-8 had first asked him, Poe generally hadn’t told many people. A few observant people had picked it up from how he addressed the little droid, but not many.

Here in the Resistance it was different; Poe had a lot more status here, and was viewed with generally less suspicion. He also had a creeping feeling that people assumed a great deal more patronage of him on Organa’s part than seemed to actually be the case. Although, of course, it was impossible for him to ascertain her motivations in selecting him for missions and promotions and the like. He felt like it wasn’t favoritism, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could ask anyone.

“It’s hard to remember at first but you get used to it,” Poe said. “And it comes in handy with some of the allied races. Most of them don’t care but some get touchy, so if you just use the ey, em, eir, emself ones, it’s a less-rocky footing.”

“Ey,” Finn said, “em, eir, emself. Okay. Got it. Sorry again, BB.”

BB burbled a shy little noise, clearly pleased, and Poe grinned at them both. “I like this human,” BB-8 said earnestly. “Keep him, Pilot!”

“I don’t have any plans to get rid of him,” Poe said.

 


	7. Only One And Only

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Finn tips his hand a bit and attempts to become a more active player in his own life. We learn a bit about Kes Dameron's day job and background, while he gets yelled at. And Poe decides to ask for what he wants.  
> Which is not what he needs, mind, but sometimes that's the next best thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ha, happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth be with you!  
> This chapter's music is Gillian Welch again because to be perfectly honest that's the USB stick in my car. You'd think I'd get my shit together but nah.  
> [Only One And Only](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Giamz8EehFQ)  
>  _There's a world of trouble Tryin' to take its turn, I can hear it shakin' underground_  
>  _Half a dozen lessons I might never learn Not until them troubles come around_

 

Poe went offworld again, and Finn was too busy to notice at first. He slept the night successfully in his own place for the first time, exhausted enough from all the collation work they were having him do on Organa’s staff, but the second night of Poe’s absence he didn’t do as well. He slept in Poe’s bed, but it didn’t help; the scent drove him crazy.

He was driven to such distraction by it that he went the next morning straight to the supply department, and found Berel, intending to ask her what on earth it meant to be “exclusive with” someone, but she took one look at his face and hauled him into the supply closet and there was some kissing and some rubbing of things and he forgot his damn name within about a second and a half, let alone what he’d meant to ask her about.

“You have a rough night, honey?” she asked, catching her breath afterward.

“I don’t sleep well alone,” he said.

“You know my hut’s the third one in on the path with the green circle sign,” she said. “You don’t have to try to sleep alone.”

He blinked at her. “What if you already have a visitor?” he asked.

“That’d make it a party,” she said, grinning.

 

He didn’t mean to take her up on it.

He did.

 

He still hadn’t asked her, or anyone, what it meant to _be exclusive with_ somebody. He knew what the words meant. He’d looked up what it meant to be married. And it meant. Generally. That you agreed to that person and only that person. And that--

It sounded alien, and bizarre, but it also sounded really lovely. But if he sat and really thought about it, he thought of Poe, and then he thought of Rey, and he didn’t know what to do about that. Maybe it was moot; they hadn’t heard from Rey. But it wasn’t something he knew what to do with.

 

It wasn’t just Berel that he took up on it. It always seemed like the thing to do. He’d gotten so good at figuring out what people wanted from him, and giving it to them.

He didn’t know why but it remained completely different with Poe. Poe never made him figure out what the next right thing to do was. Finn never worried, with Poe. He just-- he knew that he could do what he liked, and even if it wasn’t the polite thing, Poe would understand him and figure out what he meant by it.

It was so freeing, like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was like-- he was a whole person, with Poe. He didn’t feel that way, other times.

Except sometimes, a little, with the General, when he was working with her and things made sense.

It was her he finally asked. Even though the General was about as snuggly as an X-Wing, she still was the person who made… mm, probably the third-most sense to him. (Rey was still in the number one position, and was the only thing that was keeping him from asking Poe directly what it meant to be exclusive with somebody. Because. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Rey but he thought he’d want to-- well, she was the only thing he could think of when he heard the words _wife_ or _soulmate_ and he wasn’t sure why, and he didn’t know what it meant. And he didn’t know how to ask.)

It rapidly became apparent when Finn produced his scrap of flimsi that she absolutely had not been expecting him to have a report set to go on the various omissions from expenditure reports that certainly indicated the payment or receipt of bribes.

“You’re sure of this,” she said.

Finn called up the holo-display and showed her the correlations. “I,” he said eventually, not sure what to make of her expression. “I mean. For what it’s worth, you’ve got an unusually tight ship here, I think. Bribes of this nature are just— I mean, you get that kind of lossage in any organization, and I think it’s really heartening how many people are using the payoff to benefit the organization.”

“Well,” Organa said, resigned, “it’s not like there’s a lot of slack.”

“No,” Finn said. “I mean. It’s a testament to your people’s dedication that it works out at all.”

“And it’s the sort of thing I’m used to dealing with,” she said, and sighed. “But no one here wants to tell me things like this. It’s like they’ve forgotten, you know, I used to be a regular politician.”

Finn thought about that a moment, and then thought about how different he would probably feel about this woman if he had grown up with her legend the way literally everyone else had. Like Poe; he practically worshipped her. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I have no idea what the words _normal_ or _regular_ really mean.”

“I know you don’t,” she said, and her expression was soft. For some reason, she touched his face. He gave her a small smile.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, though,” he said. “I suppose that’s useful.”

“You know,” she said, “I do find it useful. But there’s something you should understand, Finn. You’re worth more to me than how useful you are, and I want you to really take that in and examine it sometime. You’re worth more to a lot of us, now, than just whatever you’re good at or useful for.”

“It’s a weird concept to wrap your mind around,” Finn admitted. “It helps, though, now that I know how your rank structure works.”

“That is a good bit of data to have,” Organa said. “You understand why we couldn’t just-- give you the chart right away.”

“Oh,” Finn said, “of course, of course. And that’s part of the point I want to make with the report I’m writing about Stormtroopers-- I could well have been a spy, they’d absolutely send a false defector.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had something like that happen,” Organa said. “But I think you’ve acquitted yourself to everyone’s satisfaction now, which is nice because it’s one less thing I have to worry about on your behalf, you know?”

Finn gave her a smile, because she was saying it like that to tease him, and he was good at figuring that sort of stuff out even if he couldn’t keep a straight face to save himself. “I’m just glad to know what relative importance Poe has, so I know whether I’m inside my chain of command or not.” He’d absolutely looked that up and been fascinated: there were actual regulations, not just customs and Things Everyone Knew But Didn’t Write Down.

“You’re pretty close with him,” Organa said, cocking an eye at him. And oh. Yes, she definitely knew. Finn wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew what had changed since their last conversation.

Well, good, it saved awkward explanations.

“Am I?” Finn gestured, sitting back in his chair. “See, I don’t know if I am or not. And I just don’t have the context to ask the questions I’ve got to ask.”

“What context are you missing?” Organa asked, folding her hands in front of her.

“Well,” Finn said, ‘if I knew, I could just do the damn research and fill it in. Like your fraternization rules, those were easy, because they’re written down. The rest of this? Not written down!” He made an exasperated gesture. “I don’t understand how relationships work, out here in the real world, where you’re allowed to have preferences and self-determination and things, because your love songs all go one way and then the stories you all tell yourselves go another way and it seems to me that literally nobody ever does what they _say_ they want to, but apparently don’t _really_ want to.”

“Ah,” Organa said.

“So I get the formal military chain of command thing, that’s fine,” Finn said, laying it out with his hands on the desk. He made a line, swept his hand across the surface. “But, apparently, although this is mostly unwritten, even in civilian life a power differential is unacceptable. So you need to find someone who’s totally equal to you in every way before you can take your pants off, or whatever it is that you do to signify your desire to enter into congress with someone, because I swear I don’t understand a bit of it unless it’s made that obvious. Maybe there’s a code I just haven’t filled in yet. Jewelry or colored shirts or something. I don’t know.” He gestured perpendicular to the line he’d swept with his hand. “But then nobody is ever truly equal, and so some people form relationships for mutual benefit. But this is frowned on! Except that it’s not, everyone does it and it’s fine.”

“I see,” Organa said, and she looked amused, but she was also paying attention.

“And so! It turns out you can just sleep with people you’re attracted to,” Finn said, “which I understand, that’s what I’m used to. But then it means something some of the time, but not other times. And sometimes it’s cool to sleep with a lot of different people, but at some random point, this becomes unacceptable, and you’re expected to give yourself entirely only to a single person forever. But how you are to know that this is the case, I can’t figure out. Because that’s one thing that was definitely expressly forbidden in the First Order-- you couldn’t form lasting attachments like that. It couldn’t mean anything more than mutual sexual satisfaction or pleasing a superior. Anything beyond that meant you needed recalibration.” He swept his arm across the table. “So I feel like that would be a big deal here. It must really be obvious when something like that happens.” He gestured again, both hands, pointing to the spot where his hand had been. “Oh, yes, there are weddings. Great! So I look at that. What is a wedding? Well, it’s for legal status. Why the hell would two people need legal status together when they already have legal status separately, or am I misunderstanding the nature of citizenship?”

Organa actually laughed, but it wasn’t an unkind laugh. “Well,” she said, “you have to talk it over, and people are bad at talking it over. So they assume different things.”

“What if you feel like that about more than one person?” Finn asked, despairing. He slouched down in his chair and looked up toward the ceiling. “What if you have no idea what any of it really means but you can’t sleep in a room by yourself and you just don’t want to be alone because you’ve never been alone for ten minutes of your life before and it feels gross to you?”

Organa put her chin on her hand and regarded him for a few moments. “People ask me,” she said, “if I miss being young, and the answer is no, and that always shocks them.”

“This is a wise observation,” Finn told the ceiling, “but does not help me.”

“No,” she said, “it doesn’t. I don’t know how to help you, Finn. The only thing I can suggest is perhaps having a conversation with one of the people, or preferably both or all of the people, you feel that way about.”

“Nobody feels that way about two people,” he said, still addressing the ceiling. “Not in the songs and stories, not in the real world. That’s not how it works. You either feel that way about one person or you fuck anyone who asks. Those are the only relationship models that seem to exist.”

“Well,” Organa said. “Those are the main archetypes. But that doesn’t mean they’re the only ways to be. Surely you’ve noticed that there are big differences between stories and reality.”

“Yes,” Finn said.

“Me, for example,” she said. “There are an awful lot of stories about me, but most of them don’t feature me at all. Not Leia. They’re always about the Princess, or the General, or sometimes a lot less nice names for the things I’ve been involved with.”

“I guess so,” Finn said.

“And Poe,” Leia said. “There are an awful lot of stories about him in which the real Poe Dameron doesn’t even figure. I mean, all kinds of wild tales. You know,” she added with a hint of amusement, “there’s a training holovid about him.”

“Really,” Finn said, sitting up to look at her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “I think we’re showing it to the new recruits sometime next week. I always arrange not to be there, but I’ve seen it. I approved it. I made them change it a bit.”

“What does he need a training holovid for?” Finn asked.

“It’s titled _Dealing With Your Feelings_ or somesuch,” Leia said. “It just got to the point where it was so ubiquitous; everyone fell in love with him and then freaked out about it. So they put together a little vid to remind people to not be weird about it. It only makes sense, he’s got this larger-than-life legend, and then he’s so personally accessible. It’s hard for an average person not to get blinded by that kind of star power.”

“What does _he_ think of this?” Finn asked, torn between astonishment and amusement.

“Oh, stars,” Organa said, “he doesn’t know, I don’t think. I’ve told them they ought to fill him in, but I’d know if he found out, I think. I don’t think he’d find it funny at all, at first. He’s not terribly dramatic but I just don’t think he’d take it in the spirit in which it’s intended.”

“Oh,” Finn said. He thought about the way Poe sometimes collapsed into himself in private moments and decided she was severely understating things. “No, I don’t think he would.”

 

________________

 

_Harbormaster’s Office, Yavin Space Station_

  


“You know I don’t play around with this stuff,” Kes said, brandishing the holopad as soon as the door closed behind them. “Etto! Forty years we’ve known each other!”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Etto said. He had been Kes’s family’s closest contact in the mostly-Iberican mostly-Outer Rim smuggler’s gang Frontera for as long as Kes had been working, and he was a good sort, if a bit timid. Kes hadn’t seen him in almost a year, and had been half-convinced he’d died in the Hosnian system, which was Frontera’s main Core Worlds hub-- he knew some of Etto’s immediate family had been there, surely. Seeing Etto’s name on the crew manifest for this ship had been an immeasurable relief.

“Forty years,” Kes said. “Have I ever taken a bribe in _forty years_?”

“Kes Dameron,” Etto hissed, “will you listen to me, I was not trying to bribe you.”

“Then what the _fuck_ is this,” Kes asked, waving the holopad again, with its glaring discrepancy in value. “Did you think I would not _notice_?”

“If you would let me explain,” Etto said. He had fresh tattoos, Kes noticed, sharp black lines across the ink that had been fading on his face since Kes had met him. Once, all of it had been that sharp. It was all the various symbols of the gang, clan affiliations and personal accomplishments like the markings on the hulls of ships, an elaborate language plain to read but only to insiders. Outsiders just saw it and knew to tread carefully. Kes was an outsider, but he’d been around long enough to know just how many of those old faded markings were administrative accomplishments. Etto was a hard worker, but essentially sweet-natured, and Frontera used him wisely. Frontera had set themselves apart from other Outer Rim gangs by focusing on the logistics, rather than the content, of smuggling, and for fifty years now had courted the edge of respectability by cementing their reputations as master cargo-handlers. An enormous proportion of the cargos they managed were legitimate, and they’d endeared themselves to the New Republic by filling the void of a lot of the Imperial administration with their own finely-honed logistical finesse.

The new ink was markings Kes hadn’t seen before, though. He didn’t know what they meant.

“I work with the family, you know I do,” Kes said, “but I have three conditions, and they haven’t changed in the entire time you’ve known me, and they are the same as my father’s, Etto, you know this-- no drugs, no slaves, no money-laundering, and _what is this_?”

“It’s for the Resistance,” Etto spat out fiercely, possibly the most assertive he’d ever been to Kes. Kes had always sort of pushed him around because that was their dynamic, and Kes was big and Etto was little and had sort of had a crush on him since they were kids, and Kes never abused that per se, but he did just a little bit. In tiny ways, only because it was funny. Nothing serious.

Etto was serious.

“The Resistance,” Kes said flatly.

Etto stared at him. “You know,” he said, “the Resistance?” His expression shaded toward incredulity at whatever he saw in Kes’s face. “The only functional structure against the First Order?” Kes still stared at him. “You know, the First Order? The murdering piece-of-shit fuckheads who destroyed most of our families?”

Kes considered that. “I don’t fuck with the Resistance either way,” he said. “Keep that shit out of my bookkeeping.”

Etto’s tattooed face went blank with astonishment. “You don’t-- Kes! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I don’t hold with them,” Kes said. “I’m not against them, but I’m not with them either.”

“After all the Organas did for your people,” Etto said.

“They all died,” Kes pointed out sharply. “Got them fucking killed, is what the Organas did for them.” He’d lost almost everyone on Alderaan when the Death Star blew it up, and they’d only been there to formalize a treaty, and it had been the end of-- everything, almost. And that was why he’d joined the Rebellion. And so perhaps he could understand how Etto felt, now, about Hosnia. Of course he could. But that didn’t mean he was on his side.

“The Organas were the only reason anyone was alive to be killed,” Etto pointed out. The older Organas, on Alderaan, had done much for Kes’s scattered people when their planet had been so damaged by unscrupulous mining practices they’d had to leave. Kes’s grandfather had gone to petition the Galactic Senate, and Bail’s father had been the first to speak for them in sympathy, but it had all come to nothing in the end. Planet-killing superweapon, wrong place, wrong time, and in the hubbub, no one really remembered the story.

“Don’t throw that in my face,” Kes said. “How dare you come here and throw the genocide of my people in my face and try to make me think it’s the same fucking cause now.”

“It _is_ ,” Etto said, throwing up his hands. “It _is_ the same cause! It’s the same fucking thing all over again!”

“It’s not the same,” Kes said.

“It is,” Etto said. He shook his head tightly. “Kes. Frontera has allied with the Resistance. We don’t go in ports that aren’t friendly to the Resistance.”

It wasn’t quite a threat. Etto had never gone against Kes. Not when they were both young nobodies, not now that-- well, Etto having survived probably meant that he was pretty high up in Frontera’s structure now. And Kes was the harbormaster of Yavin’s space station, the one that served both inhabited worlds in the system. His connections to Frontera had assured that the system was well-supplied, and had given it perhaps a little more traffic than it strictly ought to have had, given how out of the way it was.

“I see,” Kes said quietly.

Etto shook his head again. “Poe is with them,” he said. “I saw him. Poe is the commander of all their starfighters. I just assumed--”

“I have no son,” Kes said.

Etto’s face went bloodless behind the ink, so profound was his shock. His mouth worked, and finally closed, wordless.

“The Organas have taken everything from me, now,” Kes said. “I have nothing.” He gestured. “And now Frontera will leave Yavin to starve. Ashes, dust. I should have died with my people and saved us all this trouble.”

Etto carefully, tentatively reached out and found the back of the chair next to the desk. He felt it, then lowered himself into it. “I have never known anyone who loved his son the way you loved Poe,” he said softly.

“And I have mourned him,” Kes snapped.

“I saw him-- a couple of months ago,” Etto said. “When we-- we negotiated with them, and pledged our support. He was only a captain then but he was new to them. He’s been promoted since, Organa told me.”

“Don’t speak to me of this,” Kes said quietly.

“I’m having dinner with Norasol tonight,” Etto said. “She said she would be delighted to hear news.”

Of course she would. “Norasol does what she wants.”

“Kes,” Etto said, very softly, nearly whispering, “are you telling me you’re with the First Order?”

“No,” Kes said.

“The Republic has acknowledged the Resistance,” Etto said, “and is now officially aligned with it. To my knowledge there are no other major players to align yourself with.”

“I will not fight for Leia fucking Organa,” Kes said, sharp and too loud.

Etto stood up. “No one is asking you to fight for Leia Organa, you old fool.”

“She is ill-omened, she is cursed, she is tainted, she destroys everything she touches,” Kes raged, and it was like he was watching someone else-- he never lost his temper, the wrenching formative experiences of his life had shaped his rage into a bitter, finely-honed thing he could wield at will, but this was a tide, and it came up from somewhere inside his ribcage. “I let her in and she has ruined me. I allied with her and I have lost everything. I will not do it again!”

Etto was still standing there, motionless, responseless, nothing to react to, a seamless obstacle to Kes’s anger.

“You have one thing left to lose,” Etto said finally. “Two. One of those things is me.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” Kes said.

“I will not ask you to launder money for the Resistance,” Etto said. “I will amend the manifest. I will go, and I will have dinner with Norasol, and I will not speak of this with her for now. But I will be back, on the return trip, and if you have not confirmed that this port is friendly to the Republic, and by extension its ally the Resistance, then Frontera will not be able to send cargo via the Yavin harbor any longer.”

“Understood,” Kes said, gritting his teeth hard.

“The other thing, though,” Etto said, “is that your son is not actually dead, and you should count yourself lucky in that, not throw blessings back in God’s face.”

“God! Your God is no good to me,” Kes said, his rage kindling back up slowly. “My people’s gods died with our planet. I have lost everyone--”

“I lost everyone on Hosnia!” Etto shouted. “My wife! My daughter! My grandson! Hundreds of my friends, my colleagues, my clan! You are not the only one, Kes. If even one of my family had been spared to me I would not _quarrel_ with them!”

Rage or not, Kes had been Etto’s friend for his entire adult life, and he stared at Etto’s ravaged face, through the mask of tattooed markings, and finally recognized some of the fresh ones as bereavement markings, and said, “I’m sorry, Etto.”

“My grandson was born sick,” Etto said, quiet and sad. “They moved to Hosnia to be nearer to the hospital. He was better and was doing well and they said he would be perfect in another few months, and he’d be able to live anywhere, so we could go home. But Hosnia is gone and everyone who was on it. Including him. Before he ever got to live.”

“I’m sorry,” Kes said. He’d known about the grandson, he remembered. Norasol had sent a care package. He’d included booze. “I had been afraid you were dead too, Etto. It was a relief to see your name on the manifest.”

“I wish I had been with them,” Etto said.

Kes closed his eyes. He remembered wishing the same thing. The utter bafflement of grief, the indescribable thing, inadequately called bereavement, that took over your entire awareness.

“But I thought of you, Kes,” Etto went on. “I thought of what you did when this same unimaginable thing happened to you. I got so angry. But I remembered what you did, how you fought, and what a difference you made, and I drew from that. To find you here like this, Kes--”

“What a difference I made,” Kes said. “What a difference I-- to help found a Republic that failed, again. To set it up for another fucking death star or whatever-- another superweapon-- to destroy your people now that I have no more for it to destroy. And then I raised a son who despises me and my people and everything I ever have been, and he goes to this Academy, and then even that, he defects from. Right into the orbit of another Organa. Everything goes in circles, Etto. Circles like garbage going down a drain.”

“If we can circle the drain for longer, and together,” Etto said, and they stood staring at one another for a moment.

“Forty-five years you’ve known me,” Kes said.

“And I know this isn’t you,” Etto said. “I know what it is, you are so sure she will get him killed that you think it easier to mourn him now on your own terms.”

“No,” Kes said, but Etto stepped closer and put his hands on Kes’s shoulders.

“Nothing will make it easier,” Etto said. “We are old men and war has dogged us our entire lives, and now it comes back again to take the last scraps left to us. Reconcile, at least, with your son, in what little time is left before it takes everything. Don’t let him die thinking you never loved him, Kes.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Kes said, and his stomach was twisting; he hadn’t given it that level of thought, he’d blanked it out to pure rage and pushed it away because he couldn’t analyze it, and this was possibly going to kill him.

“I do know that my only consolation for my family is that they were together when they died,” Etto said. “Wherever they went, it wasn’t alone. You, and I, though, we’ll die alone. There is no other comfort for us.” He was crying now, tears following the creases age had carved through the words and symbols on his cheeks. “At least let him not be alone in his heart. He has no one else but you either! Give him that!”

“I don’t have anything left to give,” Kes said.

“You’re alive,” Etto said, “and you love him, that is all you have.”

“I can’t do this,” Kes said.

“Let us go get stupid drunk,” Etto said, “and we’ll see if we survive the night, and then we’ll decide what to do.”

Kes leaned against the doorway of the office. “That’s as shitty an idea as your ideas usually are,” he said. He rubbed his shaking hand across his face. “Let’s.”

 

______________

 

 

It had taken Finn several days’ worth of hard work to answer the questions Connix had assembled about the Stormtrooper program, and he’d pulled one all-nighter in Poe’s hut working on it. Now he’d finished, and handed it in, and General Organa took a long hard look at him and suggested he take the evening off.

He spent an enjoyable interlude being thoroughly entertained by the antics of several of the cadets. Most of them had gotten shunted to other bases, spread around the considerable network of the Resistance. That was something Finn still didn’t know much about-- the network of other bases and presences. Something like the Starkiller could wipe out this base and all the surrounding installations, but there would still be a network, a structure, and in fact, Finn was pretty sure, most of the Resistance did not pass through this base at all.

He was familiar with the concept of compartmentalization; they’d studied it in one of his theory classes, discussing the understanding of covert operations. The First Order was not above such tactics, they just mostly didn’t need to use them. Mostly the thrust of the class had been to make sure the troopers understood what kind of operatives they might encounter. There hadn’t been any instruction devoted to how to construct such a network. But it wasn’t beyond consideration that a Stormtrooper might be used in such an operation. It would take practice for the trooper to get used to operating outside of a more normal unit structure, but that was the thing Finn had been hammering home to the Resistance: the faceless Stormtroopers were more autonomous, capable of greater individual thought, than the survivors of the old Rebellion expected.

They were better shots, they were quicker on the uptake, they were cannier fighters than the Resistance expected. They were better-trained and better-treated, but most of all, more thoroughly indoctrinated. That education had come with a strong bias and it was subtle and hard to root out and sometimes Finn had to forcibly remind himself of where the new lines were for the new rules.

It was mentally exhausting and nobody but Leia seemed to know that.

The cadets left on this base were mostly older, mostly pilots, and Nunb’s new squadron was absorbing and training them. Finn felt it would be a good use of Poe’s time to keep him here to work on them, taking maximal advantage of his charisma and fame, while simultaneously minimizing his exposure to bounty hunters and, more importantly, minimizing the temptation to otherwise-neutral or vaguely friendly parties to turn him in for money anyway.

Finn had tried to suggest this but his first tentative overture had gotten him a lot of speculating looks he wasn’t exactly comfortable with, so he’d backed down.

Arana was in charge instead, and Finn noticed him in the corner of the room, wearily watching the cadets’ antics with his bright, eerie eyes.

Not eerie, Finn told himself firmly. It was hard work to break all of his mental conditioning, but he could spare the effort to stop being creepy with the xenos.

Finn went and sat next to Arana. He was Arana’s best pal now, because they’d won so much money on the bets against Finn’s marksmanship skill. Finn had assuaged a lot of hurt feelings by using some of it, the first money he’d ever possessed, to buy everyone a drink. Even though, as Arana had pointed out, he hadn’t ever lied to anyone, and it was their own fault they’d duped themselves into betting against him. Still, Arana had told him privately, it had been a good move.

“How you holding up?” he asked Arana.

“I was never this young,” Arana said. He looked a little frazzled, and Finn was starting to learn that those lines next to people’s mouths, they sometimes indicated pain when the person didn’t realize they were expressing it. Arana was officially healed, but he still used a cane sometimes, and he had it now. “They have so much _energy_.”

Finn laughed. “Poor old man,” he said. “How old are you?”

Arana slid him a sidelong look. “In actual years, or do you want the human conversion?”

As Finn had thought. “Both,” he said. Arana made a wry face. “You know,” Finn added, “the First Order didn’t have anybody in it who wasn’t human or indistinguishably similar, so I don’t-- know anything about--”

“Xenos,” Arana said for him. “You can say xenos. It’s not offensive.”

Finn nodded. “I thought, but I don’t know, you know?”

Arana nodded. “I’m a Keshian,” he said. “We mature about half the rate of humans. I was forty when I met Poe. I’m fifty-five now.”

“Did that make things weird for you?” Finn asked.

Arana shrugged. “It was weird only in that I basically look the same as I did when I started at the Academy, and Poe is hilariously not at all the same.” He gave Finn a more direct look. “You’ve seen holos of him as a kid, right?”

Finn thought of the one on the table with the bottle and gave an involuntary shiver. “Uh,” he said, “yeah.”

Arana grinned. “Besides that one,” he said. “We’ve all seen that one. And I’ll allow, he was pretty hot in that one. But most of the time he was really awkward.”

“Let’s be real though,” Finn said, “he’s always been hot. Even awkward, he was surely still hot.”

Arana sighed deeply, slumping forward slightly. “Yeah,” he said, “he’s the hottest person I know, of any species.”

Finn laughed, delighted. “I wondered if it crossed species barriers.”

“I have had a crush on him since the moment I first saw him,” Arana said, “which I feel shows exceptional dedication and you’d think maybe I’d get moved up to the front of the line, but no, it’s the opposite. He told me when he was fifteen and I was emotionally about fifteen, okay maybe twelve, that it was probably for the best if we never dated because our friendship was too important. I tried to angle for a pity fuck out of that, but by the time I was really sexually mature enough to be persuasive he’d already gotten over his slut phase.”

“Your friendship was too important,” Finn repeated, chewing that over. “Too important for what?” He’d assumed that-- well, no, that was stupid. He wasn’t particularly close friends with Berel, and she didn’t seem to care too much about getting to know him well, she just wanted to get into his pants. It was pretty straightforward, and what he was used to.

“I don’t know,” Arana said. He sighed again, looking wistful. “I mean. I can’t complain. If we ever had gotten together we surely would’ve broken up by now. I’d much rather still have him, in whatever capacity. And I mean. He’s let me actually be a really close friend to him. So I can’t-- like, I’m sure he’s amazing in bed but I’m also the only person here besides the General who’s ever met Poe’s auntie so, like. I’ll take it.”

This was sort of devastating intelligence. Finn hadn’t realized that sex gave a relationship an expiration date. He mulled that over. “Poe’s auntie,” he said, to fill the space.

“Yeah,” Arana said ”Pretty cool old lady. She might be his great-aunt.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Finn said. Was that a choice he’d made, then? He wondered if it was an irrevocable choice.

“Great-aunts and uncles are the siblings of your grandparents,” Iolo said. “Though as it happens I actually don’t think his auntie is related to him by blood at all.”

Would Finn make that choice? Would he give up any future sex just to make his friendship with Poe last longer? But the way Arana was talking, it was too late once you’d crossed that line. “I don’t really know anything about blood relations,” he said. “Or. I mean. A lot of kinds of relationships, as it turns out.”

“You’re getting the hang of it,” Arana said. “Or so I hear.” He leaned in a little, prodded Finn’s arm with his elbow. “Is it true?”

“You have to be more specific,” Finn said warily.

Arana considered that. “You know what,” he said. “Maybe I don’t want to know the specifics. It’s perhaps possible to be too involved in something.”

 _Will you stop being my friend when Poe and I break up_ , Finn wondered. “Tell me more about how grandparents work,” he said instead.

 

_______________

 

 

“I miss Rey,” Finn said, out of the blue. He’d been sitting in the mess hall by himself, unusually-- normally, he was surrounded by people. He’d become very popular. But he’d been alone when Poe came in, reading a holobook and looking out the unglazed window next to him at the endless rain. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“I know she is,” Poe said.

“How do you know?” Finn asked, tilting his head in interest.

Poe fidgeted with his fork. Finn had an empty plate next to him, and clearly had eaten his dinner. Poe had been out running errands all day, and had only just gotten in, starving, but that warranted waiting until his mouth wasn’t full to answer.

“The General knows,” Poe said. He’d asked.

“ _How_ does she know?” Finn asked, only the barest hint of impatience coloring his tone.

“The Force,” Poe said. He took a drink, collecting himself to explain it. “Look. The Force is in all living things. Someone very powerful in the Force could conceivably know about everyone in the universe. Most Force-sensitive people are at least aware of their family members, at least at reasonably-close range. The General’s brother is Luke Skywalker; she generally knows if he’s healthy or not, if he’s in distress, stuff like that. She’s not always aware of it, but if she really listens, she more or less knows. Right?”

“I didn’t know that,” Finn said.

“Which bit didn’t you know?” Poe asked.

“Well. The Force,” Finn said. “I don’t know shit about the Force.”

Poe half-smiled. “I know more than I’m strictly comfortable knowing,” he said. “I’m not-- sensitive to it but I’m like. Aware of it. It’s weird. It’s creepy. I can’t do anything with it. But anyway. I know just enough that I know what the General’s talking about.”

“So she knows that Luke is all right, but how does that translate to Rey?” Finn asked.

“She knows Rey too,” Poe said. “She can feel her. Ever since she met her, she’s aware of her. Maybe before.” He paused, and ate one of the meatballs from his plate. “Rey’s really powerful, Finn. Like. Really.”

“Skywalker-level,” Finn said.

“Absolutely,” Poe said. He wasn’t cleared to discuss any of that. He knew some things, maybe, but it wasn’t his place to let on. He chewed, swallowed, then went on. “So anyway. Leia knows Rey’s doing all right. She knows she’s with Skywalker. She doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, but presumably it’s going well or one or the other of them would be in distress. So, we’ll just have to hope for the best, but at least you don’t have to worry so much.”

Finn nodded. “I still miss her. You’d really like her, Poe. She’s a great pilot.”

“Oh,” Poe said, “BB-8 has extolled her virtues many times. I’m well aware. She might even be better than I am. Which, coming from BB-8, is really high praise.”

“You’re a hell of a pilot, though,” Finn said, which warmed Poe straight through.

  


“Fuck me,” Poe gasped, surprising himself, and Finn groaned, hips jerking as he reacted to that.

“Shit,” Finn said, “that’s hot, really?”

“Fuck,” Poe said. He’d told himself to take it slow, had made himself keep his hands on Finn’s shoulders, made himself kiss him gently and thoroughly and slowly, most importantly, so none of this was on impulse, none of this was hasty. And here he was fully clothed and so turned on he might die, and he didn’t even particularly _like_ getting fucked, historically, but holy fucking stars he wanted it now. Holy _shit_ , did he _ever._ “Yes-- fuck-- fuck me now.”

“I uh,” Finn said. “I’ve never done that.”

With great difficulty Poe got ahold of himself, a little bit anyway, and said, “We don’t have to do that. I just--”

“Oh,” Finn said, “I want to, I just-- I don’t know how, I don’t think.”

“Want to learn now?” Poe asked, using all the discipline he could scrape together to make himself finish the conversation instead of tearing Finn’s fucking pants off.

“Yes,” Finn said. He was kind of breathless too, at least. It wasn’t just Poe who was losing his mind here. “I mean-- yeah?”

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Yeah. Okay. Okay. We can do this, then, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “Just-- be patient with me, I might need practice.”

“Just go real slow,” Poe said. “Take your time. I kind of um. Haven’t done this a lot either, specifically?” He collected himself, pulled away a little, sat up. “Okay. Lubricant, and take it slow.”

“I get it,” Finn said. “I uh, I don’t have any--”

“I do,” Poe said, but then was at a loss for a moment, trying to remember where. In his old quarters he’d kept it in a jar by the bed, not that he’d ever ever used it. He’d packed in a hurry. He’d put it with-- ah yes. “Hang on.” He climbed out of bed and went to the trunk by the wall, flipped open the lid and found the box in it with hair supplies. This jar, this specific jar, had a different-colored lid, because it wasn’t for his hair. He got it out and came back to put it on the shelf by the bed with a little flourish. And then, while he was standing there, he pulled his shirt off over his head.

“I don’t think I could get tired of looking at you,” Finn said. Poe had been looked at, across the years, by a lot of people, with varying amounts of lust, desire, awe, interest, hunger, and fondness, but this one was definitely one for the internal scrapbook.

He grinned slowly, looking up under his lashes, one of his best expressions for maximum devastation, perfected years ago back when he had practice at this, and unfastened the top hook of his trousers. “You probably could eventually,” he said, biting his lip as he unfastened his trousers the rest of the way.

Finn was, as in all things, a quick study, and after a little bit of fumbling and some laughing and some really hot making out, Poe found himself making embarrassing noises and writhing a little desperately as Finn’s strong, long fingers worked inside him with an unexpectedly effective motion.

“Is it good?” Finn breathed in his ear, and Poe shivered and whimpered.

“Yeah,” he managed, inarticulate. “Ahh-- oh fuck.”

“It seems like kind of a lot of fun, actually,” Finn observed.

“Fun isn’t-- the word-- oh _fuck_ \-- fuck!” Poe shivered.

“No?” Finn had been observing him closely enough to realize that crooking his fingers just so got the best reaction, and he kept doing that, and Poe wasn’t even sure what it was that made it so great but it made sparks shoot straight up his spine and he couldn’t control his mouth when it happened. “Well. It seems like a positive concept, anyway.”

“Yes,” Poe said. “Holy-- fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck _don’t stop doing that_.”

“Okay, I won’t,” Finn said, and obliged, and Poe writhed and cried out and shoved down against his hand.

“Oh,” he panted, when he couldn’t take it anymore, “oh, oh, shit, get in me, get-- _in_ me, I can’t--”

“You seem pretty ready,” Finn agreed, charmingly eager.

“Yes,” Poe said. “Yes. Oh fuck. Oh yes.”

Finn took it slow, slower even than Poe strictly needed. “More,” Poe said, as Finn hesitated.

“Nuh-uh,” Finn said, “I’m not rushing this.”

“C’mon,” Poe gasped. It was pretty fucking intense, but it wasn’t anywhere close to what he could take.

“Patience,” Finn said, but pushed a little harder, and Poe made a strangled, wild noise, strung out somewhere between wanting and needing. “Also I need to take this slow if I’m going to make it all the way in without just coming all over your ass.”

Poe had about three-quarters of a witty comeback about just having to try again, but his mouth didn’t work well enough, so he just said, “Fuck, yes, fuck,” because those were the only words he knew how to make.

“I’m trying,” Finn said, and pushed harder, and Poe made a completely uncontrolled guttural moaning noise as his eyes crossed and rolled back in his head. “Was that a good noise?”

“Nghn’t stop,” Poe grunted, “hngh, d’nstop.”

“Okay,” Finn said, and kept pushing, and Poe made the noise again despite a half-hearted attempt not to. They were past the worst of it now, and suddenly it was easier, and now it was Finn’s turn to make really low fervent noises. “Holy shit, holy shit, Poe, that’s-- holy shit.”

“I know,” Poe said, staring at the ceiling and making himself breathe, “I know, Finn, I know.” He was in all the way now, he had to be, and there was just going to be lube everywhere, that was just how it was going to be from now on, and it was great and too much and great all at once.

Poe was on his back, Finn on top of him, and Finn had dropped his head to rest against Poe’s shoulder as he caught his breath. Poe wrapped his hand around the back of Finn’s head, enjoying the soft scratch of Finn’s close-cropped tight-kinked hair, the weight of Finn’s skull against his shoulder, the trusting laxness of Finn’s neck muscles. He was enfolded in Finn’s shoulders, smothered by him, filled by him.

Just like everything with Finn so far, Poe was finding that this all was way more intense than he remembered it being, and it was way harder to keep any kind of self-possession. It felt like Finn’s weight on him was the only thing keeping him from flying apart.

“Are we okay,” Finn said breathlessly.

“Yeah,” Poe panted, “y-yeah we’re-- uhh!” Finn moved and it sent sparks skittering again-- the taut slide and drag at the surface faded in comparison to the deep sensation of pressure inside his body, but as Finn kept moving, more sure on each repetition, what took over in importance was the feeling where Finn’s cock shoved against some sensitive part that filled the backs of Poe’s eyelids with stars and made his spine jerk.

“I get it now,” Finn said, “why people do this, I only ever saw it in holos and I didn't get it,” and he had Poe’s cheekbones between his thumbs, their bodies were all sticking together with sweat, and he slowed to kiss Poe tenderly before lowering his hands to hold Poe’s hips and picking up the pace. Poe grunted, and then gave a stuttering shout as Finn started to really work him over, moving smoothly and fluidly. He dragged the head of his cock against the-- whatever that was, inside Poe, and it was, he needed that, whatever it was he needed more of it, he needed that to keep happening, he was desperate, wrapping his legs around Finn to get at it and making all kinds of noises.

“Oh fuck,” Finn was gasping, “oh, Poe, you’re beautiful, you’re-- oh-- oh fuck--”

Poe was pretty far past words, so he didn’t try to make any of the sounds he was making into words, he wouldn’t know what to say anyway. Finn panted harshly in his ear: “Touch yourself, Poe, do it, grab your cock.”

That was more coordination than Poe had, but he managed to pry his fingers out of whatever they were holding-- Finn’s ribs or something-- and obey, and he got his hand between their bodies and fumbled around until he found his dick and then he didn’t know how he’d managed to be alive without this pressure, he needed this too, he needed Finn in him and he needed his hand on himself and there was so much happening, so much sensation, and he needed for none of it to stop.

He had no idea how long it took but he came so hard he shattered entirely, his whole body gone far away and rushing back in pieces. Finn fucked him through it, and held him, and said a lot of things, mostly sweet and fervent things, and he might have been coming forever, falling apart and scattering pieces of himself at high velocity across light-years of space.

He was aware of Finn coming, in him, still over him and around him, body hitching, beautifully. But it was sort of far away, and then they lay like that for a while, both gasping for breath and shivering with it.

“Holy fuck,” Finn said. “Poe, holy fuck. That was-- that was worth-- whatever it really means, that's worth doing.” And he rolled up onto an elbow and started to pull away.

Poe wrapped a hand around his arm. “Slow,” he hissed, suddenly acutely aware of how tangled in his body Finn was. His dick was smaller now than it was when it had gone in but Poe’s body was closing back down too, it seemed like, and he was half-afraid it would just-- _gut_ him, if Finn pulled out too fast.

Finn bent his head down and kissed Poe, gently and sweetly. “I got you,” he said, and eased out, so slow and sweet, and it sent Poe shuddering on an aftershock, whimpering breathlessly.

Finn groaned and set his teeth gently in Poe’s shoulder, and pulled out the rest of the way, slow and gentle. “Okay?” Finn murmured.

“Yeah,” Poe said, dazed, and put his face against Finn’s neck. Finn cradled him like he was a delicate thing, petting his hair and kissing the side of his head. His mind was pleasantly blank but he felt lost, drifting. “I,” he said, but there was no way to explain it, so he just finished with a repetition of, “yeah.”

Finn kissed on him a little, and pulled the blankets up over both of them, and now would be a graceful time to fall asleep, but Poe couldn’t. Damn it.

Finn was still playing with his hair, which was pleasant, even if it was going to be epically untameable after this. After a long time, Finn said softly, “I like your hair this length. I’m sorry if I made fun of it before.”

“Hm,” Poe said, running his fingers up the back of Finn’s neck to feel the crisp line where some First Order hairdresser had neatened him up with clippers. No, surely it had been too long and someone had trimmed him since. Poe wasn't sure. He-- there was a lot he didn't know about what Finn got up to, around here. He wondered if it was his place to ask. Probably not. 

“I liked the holos you showed me,” Finn said. “Of how my hair would look.”

“Yeah?” Poe said with a soft laugh. “I’d braid it for you if you wanted me to.”

Her hair had curled like this. She’d sometimes shaved an undercut, a few inches up on her neck, and it had felt just like this under his fingers. And she was gone. She had left him, and she was dead, whited out to nothing in the explosion.

“How do you know how to do that?” Finn asked, laughing, inevitable, inexorable.

It was like a big hunk of metal straight through Poe’s chest, and he tried to breathe around it, feebly, and his fingers were still in the soft scratchy warmth of the hair at the nape of Finn’s neck. Poe swallowed hard.

“I had,” he said, and it came out hoarse, “I knew-- someone.” And it hung there like that, a broken-winged bird in the middle of a sand flat.

And Finn didn’t strike. He pulled back a little, and ran his thumb across Poe’s cheekbone, a snake in striking distance of the doomed bird, but he just gave Poe a soft, contemplative smile, and kissed his cheek in the wake of his thumb. “Okay,” he said, and let it go, just like that.

That weird clenching in Poe’s chest was the desire to cry, but he was a grown-ass man and there was no call for that sort of thing. He hung grimly on, and Finn fell asleep after a while, breathing soft and even in Poe’s ear. Sleep must have taken Poe too, at some point, but it took its sweet time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I knew when I first separated this story into chapters that this one was going to need a lot of work, and kind of mentally set it aside in my head. It was half the length of the others and just-- missing any impact except for you know. Sex. Which is cool but.  
> I built it up in my head like I do (witness all the unfinished shit on my AO3, ugh), and in my desperation to avoid finishing this chapter, I wrote a novella about Kes and Shara. If you follow me on Tumblr, you've seen some excerpts of that. (Tumblr's not meant to be exclusive content, I just sort of. That's where stuff goes while I'm thinking about it. It eventually makes its way over here if it's any good.)  
> But that gave me a few really important insights to Kes's backstory in particular, and where Poe comes from.  
> But it also meant that I didn't get this chapter finished on time. I've cut a couple scenes from it that I just don't have time to tighten up. They'll maybe get stuck into another chapter, or maybe stuck together into an outtakes section, or something. (It's mostly what Poe was up to and why he wasn't doing Arana's job, but really it's mostly just a sleepover with the cadets and BB-8, and it wasn't getting where it needed to go. So, maybe later guys. Otherwise, be assured, Poe was super busy, kind of annoyed, and a little upset for most of the intervening time.)  
> I'm also a little worried parts of don't *quite* hang together. But. It's just how I work. I guess this is actually closer to how I normally write, LOL.  
> So----- any inconsistencies are absolutely my fault and not my betas'.


	8. To Live Is To Fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BB-8 actually has enough data to complete whatever the in-universe version is of a master's thesis on Poe Dameron's issues.  
> This is a long chapter with some action and some backstory, and it has its own epilogue, which by rights should be posted separately but would be kind of a spoiler to put somewhere else, so it's just buried at the bottom of this chapter instead.  
>  **TW: mentions of past suicidal ideation.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [To Live Is To Fly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eSggloAtBo%0A), Townes Van Zandt  
>  _Living's mostly wasting time_  
>  _I'll waste my share of mine_  
>  _But it never feels too good_  
>  _So let's don't take too long_

 

 

YOU GOT RECHARGED, BB-8 observed on the text interface as they settled into hyperspace for the duration.

Poe knew immediately what B meant, of course, but spent a moment trying to work out how ey knew that. “I’ve told you,” he said, “that’s not what it is.”

BUT IT IS, FOR YOU, BB-8 said.

“I do not get recharged by getting an extension plugged into my port,” Poe said, rolling his eyes.

MOST HUMANS DON’T, NO, B insisted, BUT YOU DO, POE.

Ey didn’t usually refer to Poe by name. Generally, B preferred to use designations ey emself had come up with. Possibly, Poe thought, in lieu of honorifics, because Poe had deprecated that protocol pretty much right away, because he hated things calling him “master”; but given how B’s experimental programming worked, it was really hard to hit what you were aiming at. And in those early days, Poe hadn’t had very good aim anyway. That was probably it, but didn’t solve the mystery of why B was suddenly calling him by his first name and implying he was a robot.

Er, a robot that recharged via dick. Which was an odd twist. “I don’t, though, Beep,” Poe said. “I recharge from sleep like a normal human, because I _am_ a normal human.”

HUMANS HAVE NEEDS BEYOND THE PHYSICAL, BB-8 said. THEIR EMOTIONAL NEEDS ARE VERY IMPORTANT AND, LIKE AN AI’S PROGRAMMING, MUST NOT BE NEGLECTED.

“So you’re saying I got an emotional recharge from plugging someone’s extension into my port,” Poe concluded. Well. It wasn’t. Entirely wrong? Less wrong than implying Poe was a strangely-constructed robot, anyway.

IT IS NOT UNIVERSALLY TRUE THAT HUMANS REQUIRE SEXUAL CONTACT FOR EMOTIONAL HEALTH, Beep said. BUT IT IS COMMON. AND IN YOUR CASE IT IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE. YOU REQUIRE SEXUAL INTIMACY FOR YOUR EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL HEALTH.

This would be a better thesis if Poe wasn’t feeling sort of weirdly emotionally devastated. Finn had still been asleep when he’d woken up and left, and he’d just felt, looking at the man’s beautiful sleeping face, that he was some kind of ethereal, unattainable beauty on some level other than the grinding dirt where Poe himself lived. No matter how close he got to the guy, he was never going to be on his level in any meaningful way.

It was weird because that wasn’t the kind of thing Poe normally thought about. But then, nothing had been normal, not for a very very long time, and it wasn’t likely he’d live long enough to ever see anything be normal again. “I mean, you have a point, Beep, but I think you’re a little wide of the mark. I thought you said you didn’t know what humans got out of that. Is this a new thesis?”

NO, I HAVE A LOT OF OBSERVATIONAL DATA. WHEN YOU GO TOO LONG WITHOUT SEXUAL INTIMACY YOU LOSE MENTAL STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY, B went on. FOR EXAMPLE WHEN YOU WERE POSTED ON THAT STAR CRUISER ROTATION. DURATION SIX MONTHS WITH 0 CONJUGAL VISITS AND NO INTIMACY FROM ANY OTHER PARTNERS TO MAKE UP FOR IT.

Poe had been married a year and a half, then, and they’d made it work up until that point. But six months with a grand total of two live holomessages, and he’d been so painfully, achingly, desperately lonely he still cringed to think of it. “Um,” he said, “Beep, I’m actually pretty sure that was space sickness. Some humans really don’t do well in prolonged stretches offworld.”

SPACE SICKNESS ENTAILS MOSTLY HEADACHES, DISORIENTATION, SENSORY HALLUCINATIONS,  AND MILD USUALLY REVERSIBLE DEMENTIA, B said. YOU UNDERWENT FAIRLY PROFOUND DISSOCIATION AND DEPERSONALIZATION, AND SUFFERED LASTING BRAIN DAMAGE CONSISTENT WITH SEVERE DEPRESSION.

“What?” Poe said. “No I didn’t.” He’d been incredibly lonely and homesick on that rotation, certainly, and he’d been so simultaneously bored and stressed he’d literally blanked his memory of huge stretches of it, but he hadn’t _suffered brain damage_.

I SCANNED YOU MYSELF, B said chillingly. I HAVE SCANNED DATA ON YOU GOING BACK TO THE DAY YOU UPGRADED MY SENSOR CAPABILITY. I HAVE CORRELATED TIME SINCE LAST SEXUAL INTIMACY WITH DECREASED BRAIN ACTIVITY. YOUR BRAIN ACTIVITY AS OF THIS MORNING HAD IMPROVED. THEREFORE, YOU RECEIVED A RECHARGE.

“That’s messed-up, B,” Poe said. “It is messed-up that you know that.” He’d upgraded BB-8’s sensors in his final year at the Academy, when they’d started paying him for some of the teaching work he’d taken on. Sensors, camera, and transmission antenna.

IT IS NOT AN INAPPROPRIATE THING TO KNOW, BB-8 said, and Poe knew em well enough to pick up that the tone there was haughtiness, not defensiveness. I AM JUSTIFIED IN MY CONCERN. YOU HAVE BEEN OPERATING AT SUB-OPTIMAL PARAMETERS. YOU REQUIRE SIGNIFICANT ADDITIONAL AMOUNTS OF INTIMACY TO GET BACK UP TO THE ESTABLISHED BASELINE.

“You’re saying lack of sex makes me stupid,” Poe said.

NO NO NO NO NO, BB-8 said, clearly annoyed. PRIMARILY IT IS AREAS OF THE BRAIN ASSOCIATED WITH EXPERIENCING PLEASURE AND ACCESSING MEMORIES THAT SHUT DOWN. IT IS LIKELY THAT THE TRAUMA YOU HAVE SUFFERED HAS AFFECTED THESE AREAS AS WELL BUT SOME OF THE DEGENERATION IS CERTAINLY LINKED TO YOUR PERIODS OF ISOLATION AND CELIBACY.

“So,” Poe concluded, “you’re saying that being fucked-up makes me stupid, and lack of sex doesn’t help. So I should fuck my way to greater cognitive capability?”

IT IS NOT COGNITIVE CAPABILITY WE ARE DISCUSSING, Beep said. DON’T BE A FUCKFACE.

“Hold up,” Poe said. “So you’re saying you could tell I got laid last night because my brain activity was higher. When did you scan me?”

DURING PREFLIGHT CHECKS, B answered, prompt and smug.

“Weren’t you… doing preflight checks, at that point?” Poe asked, alarmed.

THIS UNIT IS CAPABLE OF MULTITASKING LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER, BB-8 said, AND ALSO THAT IS PART OF MY STANDARD PREFLIGHT CHECK, I ASSESS MY PILOT. HOW DO YOU THINK I GOT SO MANY SCANS WHERE YOU’RE IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME THING?

It was actually kind of genius, now that Poe thought about it. “I,” he said. “What?”

YOU THINK ABOUT THE SAME THINGS IN THE SAME ORDER EVERY TIME, BB-8 pointed out. IT MEANS YOUR BRAIN ACTIVITY IS HIGHLY CONSISTENT. REMOVES MOST OF THE VARIABLES THAT BRAIN SCANS ARE PRONE TO. THAT’S WHY IN STUDIES THEY USUALLY GIVE PATIENTS A LONG LIST OF DIFFICULT QUESTIONS THAT THEY HAVE TO ANSWER IN A SPECIFIC ORDER.

“How do you know that?” Poe asked suspiciously.

BECAUSE I RESEARCHED IT, BB-8 said. FIRST WHEN YOU WERE STUDYING BASIC PSYCHOLOGY AT THE ACADEMY BUT THEN WHEN WE WERE ON THAT STAR CRUISER ROTATION I LEARNED MORE BECAUSE I WAS AWARE OF A VERY HIGH RISK THAT YOU WERE GOING TO COMMIT SUICIDE, MOST LIKELY IN A WAY THAT WOULD ALSO END ME, AND I HAVE A DIRECTIVE THAT COMPELS ME TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THAT.

Poe opened and closed his mouth a couple of times.

“Buddy,” he said finally. “I _wouldn’t_ \-- Beep, I wouldn’t kill you. I wouldn’t _ever_ do something like that.”

I AM AWARE THAT YOU VALUE ME AND WOULD NOT WILLINGLY HARM ME, B conceded graciously, BUT I ALSO STUDIED IT AND HUMANS HURT OR SOMETIMES KILL THEMSELVES WHEN THEIR BRAINS ARE DAMAGED, AND AN OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD OF PILOTING IS SUICIDE BY DELIBERATE PILOT ERROR, SO IT WAS A STATISTICALLY POSSIBLE OUTCOME.

“I wouldn’t,” Poe said, deeply distressed. “I’ve never-- I _wouldn’t do that_. BB-8, I would never hurt you.”

THIS IS WHY I DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING AT THE TIME, B groused. I DIDN’T WANT TO UPSET YOU.

“You should have talked to me about it, B,” Poe said. “I didn’t-- Stars, B, you must’ve been so scared.” He was near tears, thinking of it. He’d sort of-- he’d never thought concretely about driving his T-85 into the side of the star cruiser or holding the controls steady in an asteroid shower, instead of dodging, just to see what happened. They’d been abstract kind of thoughts with no real impulse behind them, because he’d considered any damage to BB-8 unacceptable.

It had been harder to ignore some of the other thoughts, the ones where he just went out an airlock or misused a shaving razor or drank antifreeze, but the ones that would hurt B had all been crossed right off the list.

I AM NOT A MEATSACK, Beep said. I HAVE NO FEAR OF DEATH, THAT WOULD BE NONSENSICAL. BUT I HAVE SELF-PRESERVATION PROTOCOLS. I WAS NOT AFRAID, I JUST HAD TO CONSIDER HOW TO OBEY THOSE PROTOCOLS, SO I DEVISED A METHOD TO MONITOR YOUR CONDITION.

Something terrible percolated through Poe’s haze of distress, and he said slowly, “Did you report this?”

NO, BB-8 said. NOT THE-- I FILED THE BRAIN SCANS. I PUT THOSE IN YOUR RECORD. I ALWAYS ADD SCANS OF YOU TO YOUR RECORD. BUT NO NOTES. I DID NOT SHARE MY CONJECTURES.

Poe considered that. “Did anyone ask you why you scan my brain every time we do preflight checks?” he asked.

I DON’T FILE IT SEPARATELY EVERY TIME, BB-8 said. I JUST UPDATE THE LAST ONE. UNLESS THERE’S A SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE, THEN I START A NEW FILE. YOU’VE BEEN IMPROVING STEADILY SINCE YOU JOINED THE RESISTANCE, WITH A FEW HITCHES. BUT IT’S A MARKED INCREASE SINCE YOU STARTED SLEEPING WITH FINN!

“We, uh,” Poe said, “it isn’t, we haven’t been doing that for that long.” B was on a tear with using proper names today, he wondered what was up with that. Possibly the breakthrough of discussing Magic Healing Dick was enough to override the Weird Nicknames Protocol.

SLEEPING, B said. I DIDN’T SAY FUCKING. THERE HAVEN’T BEEN ENOUGH INSTANCES OF THAT FOR STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE. THAT WAS WHY I WAS JOKING THAT YOUR BED WAS WARMER. PHYSICAL INTIMACY IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU BUT SEXUAL INTIMACY IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT.

“Okay,” Poe said, “okay, okay, Beep, okay.” He shoved his visor up to rub his face. His droid thought he was suicidal and would be healed by the magic of dick. Also, his droid had been sending frequent brain scan updates to his medical file and Dr. Kalonia wasn’t an idiot and had probably noticed, and likely had some idea of why, especially if BB-8 highlighted areas of change or anything like that. If nothing else, she had empirical data that his droid was obsessively monitoring him for some mysterious thing possibly relating to brain damage.

Great.

When coupled with his weird compulsion to repeatedly get his eyes checked, she probably suspected him of being completely fucking bonkers. She was probably filing her report with the General right now.

SO KEEP FUCKING JACKET GUY, BB-8 concluded. MORE OF YOUR BRAIN LIGHTS UP WHEN YOU DO.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Poe said. “Thanks, buddy. I’m glad you’re looking out for me.”

DAMN RIGHT I AM, B said.

 

 

Two days later, after absolutely zero time in his own bed and an amusing but not exactly relaxing sleepover in the drafty hangar of a temporary base with six of their youngest cadets and several new volunteers they were screening as new recruits, Poe stood at the edge of the air strip next to a newly-refurbished T-70 and looked at the datapad that maintenance chief Goss Toowers had just handed him.

“I mean,” Goss said, “it’s a perfectly good craft.”

They’d buffed the scorch marks off it, overhauled the ventilation system, and generally done their best to remove the traces of the damage that had eventually killed Altaira. She’d taken a hit that had done enough damage to give her terrible electrical burns, but what had wound up fatal was that the vent system had ignited and she’d breathed fire. It was fucking terrifying.

Poe had survived a vent system fire too, but it had been a near thing. It was probably in third place among his nightmares. That horrible sick sensation of breathing to no avail-- he diverted his train of thought.

“Her dying act was to get it back here,” Poe said quietly. “We should honor that by using the craft she saved.”

“You wanna just-- put one of the new kids in it?” Goss asked. “If they don’t know, they won’t be superstitious.”

Poe was a vocal opponent of superstition, and made much of encouraging positive thinking and the like. But at this very moment he was wearing the last undershirt he owned that still had one of Norasol’s warding spells sewn into the neck binding. And he’d cut up the old ones and pulled the warding spells out to recycle them into his new shirts, though he didn’t know enough about that kind of magic to know if that would work.

It wasn’t _real_ , but that didn’t mean it didn’t _work_.

“No,” he said, “I can’t do that to them. I’ll be the one to test it, at least.”

“It’s good to go,” Goss said, “but you know that don’t mean nothin’.” He rolled his neck, an odd gesture that Poe couldn’t parse; he was a Shozer and their body language was pretty opaque to humanoids. “Seems silly when we have all those T-85s, but-- I mean, they all came with pilots, pretty much, so.”

“We still need every craft we can get,” Poe said. “This’ll do fine for one of the stripped ones for covert missions. There are so many old T-70s kicking around, it’s not like we can’t swap parts out and make it totally anonymous.”

“Yeah,” Goss said, “that was what I was figuring. Hence the paint job.”

It was a neutral paint job, devoid of any squadron colors or markings. “It’ll do,” Poe said. He skimmed the datapad, grimaced at a few of the details, tried not to think about the four days Altaira had suffered in the medbay before she’d finally succumbed. He’d visited as much as he could, but she’d never spoken. He was pretty sure she’d recognized him; she’d blinked at him, at one point.

He hadn’t known her that well. She’d been a bush pilot, older than him, a little suspicious of the Republican Fleet defectors, even more cool toward the Academy grads, but she’d been polite to him, professional, and even kind on occasion.

It was a weird thing, to fly a craft the previous pilot had taken a fatal wound piloting. As they ducked back into the hangar to retrieve BB-8 and Poe’s flight gear and a couple of esoteric things Goss needed, Poe thought briefly about how Norasol probably would have had something she could do for that exact situation. Some herb she could burn, or words she could say, or gestures or things. Something to talk to the spirit world and redirect and refocus her energy to deal with it. The warding spells were narrow bands of homespun fibers she braided with her fingers in intricate patterns, with strands of her own hair and things like that sometimes twisted in. For a while all of Poe’s clothes had had such things inside the seam bindings, but that had been a very long time ago. He’d learned to make the braids, as a child, but he didn’t remember now.

It was perhaps nonsense but it was also undeniably effective on the mind. And Poe missed her fiercely, missed home, missed his father, missed the living jungle and the little singing creatures in the branches, and the way magic had always seemed real, and how big and warm his father’s hands always had been around the back of his neck or on his arm or on his face.

(One of the volunteers they were screening, last in line so she’d slept in the hangar with them afterward, had been a young itinerant cargo pilot, who had watched Poe strangely as they’d set up their cots behind a partition to block the drafts. She’d suddenly snapped her fingers and pointed at him and said, in Iberican, “I _knew_ I knew you, your father’s the harbormaster at Yavin. You laugh just like him!” and Poe had stared at her so blankly that one of the [non-Iberican-speaking] cadets had assumed that the cargo pilot was a bounty hunter using a mind-control code and had leapt to tackle her, and chaos had briefly ensued. After it was all sorted out and feathers smoothed down [and it was _just fucking fantastic_ that the baby cadets now thought they were Poe’s bodyguards, it really was, Poe just _could not wait_ until Pava found out, the ribbing was going to be _a blast_ ], the cargo pilot, Marita, had told Poe how kind Kes had been to her, and Poe had thanked her warmly and then spent the rest of the night unable to sleep for how badly homesick he was. He was thirty-two, this was stupid, he’d left home _eighteen years ago_ , but _stars_ , he missed his Papa.)

“You about ready?” Goss asked.

“Yeah,” Poe said. He wasn’t bothering with the whole flight suit, the compression gear, any of the long-term stuff; he was just going to check over all the craft’s systems and make sure it was usable.

And, hopefully, shed whatever jinx it might have still on it from killing its last master.

“That’s not the standard vent clip,” Goss said, watching Poe fasten the respirator clip to the front of the flying harness. It was the most complicated bit of the chest box attachment, and fitted into the craft’s system once the pilot was harnessed in.

“No,” Poe said, “it’s mine.” He fiddled with it a moment. Goss was a good dude and deserved more than a short answer. “One of my postings with the Navy, there was a problem with these pirates who were trying to control a shipping lane. They weren’t even a gang, just pirates. And they found a bunch of vulnerabilities in our X-Wings, and one of them was that they could target the vent systems.”

Goss’s expression was always hard to read, but Poe was getting the hang of it, so he could tell the Shozer was horrified. “Oh no,” he said. Onboard ventilation systems were better-designed in some craft than others; they were pretty minimal in X-Wings since they were single-passenger craft, and in the successive revisions of the design they’d never really improved them.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Killed one of my wingmates, put me in the medbay for six weeks until all my shit grew back, it was pretty bad. But I-- our fabrication engineer-- was a, she was, uh--” He collected himself. “She was a genius, and I mean she was actually like, measurably a genius, and she figured out that the systems didn’t need an overhaul. Just redesigned the respirator clips, and hey presto, that was enough to make the vulnerability non-exploitable.”

“Wow,” Goss said. He reached forward and delicately picked up the clip to examine it, turning it carefully in his thick three-fingered hand. “Why aren’t these standard?”

Poe cleared his throat. “Two months later the pirates blew up our fabrication facility, took out our entire ground crew, including the engineer and all her assistants, and her notes were lost, so-- we’re not entirely sure how she made these.”

“Oh,” Goss said.

Poe shrugged. “So it’s, I mean. Most people don’t know about the vulnerability so it wasn’t pressing. Jerban here,” their materials fabrication guy, “he has the design mostly worked out. But it’s a low priority. I just. I don’t.” He cleared his throat again. “I don’t like to fly with the standard clips anymore.” He managed a tight smile. “It’s really just superstition to bother with it for a test flight but I just. You know how pilots are.”

Goss was looking at him, and it didn’t take any particular effort of interpretation to figure out what he was thinking. It made Poe twitchy. “What was the engineer’s name?” he asked. “I think I heard about that.”

“Ranisha,” Poe said. “Ranisha-- Callis.” It came out clean like a sharp knife, with only one little hitch to betray him.

Goss nodded slowly. “I did hear about that,” he said, and Poe knew what else he’d heard about, and there just weren’t words for how little he wanted to talk about that, right now or honestly ever.

“I don’t feel like doing a test flight,” BB-8 announced, rolling up and nudging Poe’s leg. “We just got back and we’re due rest time and I want a recharge!”

Poe looked down at the little droid. B didn’t use the first person a ton, but went through phases with it. “I’d love a recharge too, buddy,” he said, “but I figured we could get a couple more things done before lunch anyway.”

“I don’t care about lunch because I’m not a meatsack,” BB-8 said grouchily.

“You’re really in a mood, friend,” Poe said. He took a knee to look at the droid more directly, and put a hand out to touch the spot near eir sensor array. “Your processor’s all hot. Do you need to shut down for a minute?”

“No,” BB-8 said, spinning eir lower sphere vehemently in place. “I want someone else to fly this stupid thing. It doesn’t show up on my scans but it damaged you when this pilot died and I don’t want you to be the one who has to deal with this!”

“You are just all about the devastating emotional truth-bombs this week,” Poe said grimly. “Beep, we’re at war. We have a lot of things to do. I want to be the one to test-fly this thing because I know you have better sensors than most of the other astromechs and you’re a lot more likely to be able to spot any problems.” He pushed to his feet, and Goss nodded thoughtfully.

“That’s a good point,” he said. “He’s right, BB-8.”

BB-8 regarded Goss for a long moment. Ey liked the Shozer, and so did Poe; Goss was the only person Poe had ever given BB-8’s access codes to. Someone else could wipe em, but Goss could reset em without a wipe. If Poe was killed, that was the only way BB-8 was going to remain usable and not have to be started again from scratch. Back in the Navy, Poe had fatalistically accepted that BB-8 would just get wiped to zero in his absence, and had consoled himself that it was better that way. Here, though, Poe was starting to feel like BB-8’s consciousness surviving would be some kind of consolation.

It wasn’t like the astromech droid was his child, but sometimes it felt that way.

“Fine,” B said grudgingly. “Fine, let’s go get this over with.”

 

 

____________

____________

 

 

Poe had left without waking Finn up or saying goodbye, and Finn didn’t know if that was meant to be cold or not. His impulse was to consider it dismissive, but nothing in the evening preceding that would support the thesis.

The sex was amazing but it was starting to give Finn a nagging sense of unease that Poe basically never made eye contact during sex. Sometimes it made Finn feel like he could be anybody. But then, it could also be that Poe was a little overwhelmed. Finn was finding it all pretty intense, but he’d figure that was down to his own inexperience. Poe wasn’t inexperienced, but he might be out of practice. Everyone else Finn slept with was astounded that he’d managed to get Poe into bed, to the point that Finn was convinced he had screwed up somehow by anyone finding out. If anyone else had slept with Poe the entire time he’d been with the Resistance, they hadn’t told a soul about it.

Finn hadn’t told anybody, but they’d all been assuming it since before it happened, so he had no idea what else he was supposed to have done, there. Fortunately there at least didn’t seem to be any sign of Poe being less of a good friend to him, as Arana had seemed to think was the inevitable fate, so perhaps he could stave that one off for a while, at least.

He kept busy; he wasn’t here to daydream about romance, after all. (He, it was becoming increasingly clear, had _a lot_ to do.) Today’s agenda included confirming the projected expenses schedule by checking up on the comprehensive inventory the maintenance and fabrication departments had done over the previous two days, and which Finn had spent the previous day helping with. He was good at inventory, and better at motivating his bored compatriots to finish it, and he’d worked so hard he’d slept like a baby in his own bed by himself. Until about two hours before dawn, but it was better than nothing.

Jerban, the head fabrication engineer, was a decent fellow, happy to show Finn how everything worked. Some people had treated Finn with suspicion, but either Jerban wasn’t a suspicious sort or he had gotten the memo about not doing that, because in no time Finn was comfortable enough to pepper him with questions, which he delightedly answered.

“You didn’t study any engineering?” Jerban asked.

Finn shook his head. “Only a little,” he said, “just real basic overview-type stuff. Most of our education was like that-- overviews, and then they went really deep into the pragmatic stuff. So I have a lot of really basic theoretical knowledge, and then there’s just this subset of stuff that I’ve been really drilled in.”

“Seems like a lot of investment,” Jerban said. “I’d wager you’ve got a lot more education than most of our average foot soldier types.”

“It takes all kinds,” Finn said, because he’d discovered the same thing. His comrades here had all kinds of backgrounds, but some of them clearly had never learned any math besides basic arithmetic, multiplication and division. A few didn’t even seem to have a thorough grounding in reading, though it was hard to really evaluate those things casually. The average person here knew more than Finn did about the history of everything except the Empire, had a much more comprehensive knowledge of some kind of shared popular culture that included music and holo-shows of varying kinds, and had enjoyed a greater variety of experience at human relationships. But Finn had a better grounding in mathematics than most of the others except the pilots and some of the technicians, and knew more about military theory and tactics than anyone except the highest echelons of command, here.

He was also a better shot than anyone so far who had challenged him, on any weapon.

“We could use some better-trained kinds,” Jerban said grimly. He rummaged through a door, and pulled out a square object, about the length of Finn’s hand on a side, with a couple of knobs and switches on it. Finn recognized it as part of a pilot’s flight harness-- it was the box thing that sat on their chests. “Back with the Republic, we didn’t have the best and the brightest there either, but at least we had good funding.”

“Never underestimate the importance of good funding,” Finn said, because he knew all about money now.

“Speaking of the best and brightest, though,” Jerban said. “Dameron’s ex-wife, man. You’re tight with him. Has he talked about her at all?”

“His what?” Finn asked, certain he’d mis-heard.

“His ex-wife,” Jerban said, clearer, unperturbed. “She was a fabrications engineer for the Navy for a little while, and _stars_ , but she was good. Too good for us; she shouldn’t have been there at all. I only worked with her for about a week, I was transferring out as she came in, but I’ll never forget her. Such a goddamn shame, what happened.” He glanced over, and only then seemed to notice Finn’s expression.

Finn had no idea what his expression was.

“I mean,” Jerban said, faltering slightly. “I’m sure however badly I feel, Dameron feels worse, but I mean. I’m. Uh. I’m sure he has talked to you about it, you don’t need. Uh. My feelings on the-- uh, on the topic.”

“Dameron was _married_?” Finn asked, mildly, blinking.

“Uh,” Jerban said, going blank with surprise. “Uh, yeah, uh-- he uh-- Huh. I guess he doesn’t talk about it?”

“No,” Finn said, frowning.

“I mean, he’s not _now_ ,” Jerban offered hastily.

“I assume he would have mentioned _that_ ,” Finn agreed, “but, I mean. We are talking about Poe, here.”

“I mean,” Jerban said. “They got a divorce. But also, she died.”

“What, from that?” Finn hadn’t read up on divorce, but he’d read about marriage and it had been mentioned, and he didn’t think it was usually fatal, but maybe it was and he was _severely_ underestimating things. Maybe _that_ was why nobody wanted to tell him about what being exclusive really entailed.

“What? No,” Jerban said. “I, what? No, she filed for divorce and then requested a transfer but the base was attacked and she died, right before she was supposed to transfer out. It was really tragic and all of us were really upset. I imagine Dameron was devastated, but-- I mean, maybe he was so upset that’s why he doesn’t talk about it.”

Finn thought about Poe’s desperate blank-eyed avoidance of whose hair he had learned to braid. “I think you might be onto something with that,” he said. Well, that was-- it was terrible all around, was what it was. It explained the big hollow empty space that there seemed to be right in the middle of Poe’s-- heart, or soul, or whatever.

“I didn’t mean to, like, stick my nose in,” Jerban said.

“Oh,” Finn said, but was interrupted by a resounding, percussive thump that he felt in his chest just before he heard. “What was that?”

Jerban was already moving, flinging himself out through the door. Finn caught up with him just outside: there was a big black billow of smoke just rising from the direction of the airfield. “Are we under attack?” Finn asked.

Jerban was completely frozen still, listening. “No sirens,” he said. “No alarm.” He looked at the smoke, which was still rising, more behind that initial puff. “Starcraft explosion. We gotta get over there.”

“Attack, though?” Finn asked.

“No follow-up,” Jerban said. “Attack, we’d know. That’s either an accident or sabotage.”

“What’s burning?” Finn asked breathlessly, tearing down the path after Jerban, seeing other ground crew converging.

“Spacecraft,” Jerban said.

He was right, there was an X-Wing driven into the ground at a strange angle, the long forward section billowing smoke, the wings no longer X-shaped. It couldn’t have crashed from a significant height, there wasn’t enough of an impact crater; it looked like it had exploded from the inside instead.

And there were several people up on the fuselage beating and prying at the canopy, which suggested horrifyingly that whoever’d been attempting to fly it was still in there. He put on a burst of speed and leapt up onto the part of the craft’s nose that wasn’t on fire, just as the big reptile-looking guy in the ground crew uniform managed to get a laser saw through the transparisteel.

“You,” the reptile guy said, “grab him, I’m too big to get in there.”

Finn grabbed a prybar from one of the other ground crew standing on the fuselage, and used it to bend back more of the transparisteel so he could wedge himself in. The pilot was unmoving, helmet covering his face, but he was humanoid and probably male and wearing a shirt that Finn recognized as Poe’s. Finn lunged inward through the jagged hole, and could barely reach the straps to unbuckle Poe’s flight harness. It was definitely Poe, and his trousers were on fire, and he wasn’t moving or reacting at all.

Finn grabbed him, but Poe’s chest box thing was still hooked into the plane’s interface, so Finn grabbed it and gave it a hard yank. The clip gave way with a squeak and a violent _ping_ , and he yelled, “I got him!”

Three or four people hauled on his legs and the back of his shirt and got him out with Poe clutched in his arms. Those same three or four people helped him beat the fire out that was still crawling along Poe’s clothing, and they collectively dragged him down off the burning fuselage. “Get the astromech,” the big reptile guy was bellowing, “we gotta get the astro,” but Finn had no time to consider it.

Kun grabbed Finn and pulled. “Keep running,” she said, “c’mon, we got him-- if the fuel tanks go we’re fucking dead.” Everyone else had run back to get the astromech and try to keep the fire from getting to the fuel tanks-- they had suppressant now, Finn could smell the sharp heavy scent of it. He helped Kun haul Poe a distance away, dead weight, and they finally put him down.

“He’s not breathing,” Finn said, looking at Poe’s horribly still face, at his lips, pale and bloodless. “He’s-- he’s not breathing! What do we do?”

Kun swore, and laid Poe down and put her hand to his mouth. “No he’s not,” she said, yanking Poe’s helmet off, and unhesitatingly pinched his nose shut and put her mouth to his mouth. Finn stared. Was she _kissing_ him? Was that what you did when someone died? She put her fingers against his neck. “Come on, Dameron,” she said, and put her hands on his chest and started pressing, hard, down on the middle of his chest, in jerky movements.

“What are you doing?” Finn asked. He’d been trained to check for breathing and a pulse and if they were absent, you were supposed to move on. He’d never done that, though. Not until Slip.

“Saving his fucking life for once,” Kun said. She pinched his nose again and-- she was inflating his lungs, Finn realized. “He’s saved mine enough.”

This time when she shoved on his ribs, Poe coughed and shuddered, and it was the most beautiful thing Finn had ever seen. “Poe,” Finn said.

“I got you,” Kun said, “it’s okay, I got you,” and Poe coughed and coughed and coughed, turning onto his side with Kun’s help. He was breathing in harsh gasps, shuddering, and Kun held his shoulders and kept repeating her reassurances.

“Fuck,” Poe said finally, his voice a wreck. “Que coño pa-- what the fuck happened?”

“The fucking piece of shit X-wing blew up,” Kun said, “like I told you it would.”

“You did not,” Poe rasped, but even Finn could tell it was just reflex. He coughed again, cradling his ribs and grimacing. “Ow, fuck.”

“I might have broken your ribs,” Kun said, putting a hand to his chest in concern.

“No,” Poe gasped out, “no, I’d know by now if you did. Ow. Fuck.”

“Sorry,” Kun said.

“Was I-- out?” Poe had his eyes squeezed shut.

“A little,” Kun said. “You were kind of on fire. The vent system shut down and I think you suffocated.”

Poe blinked and ran his hands down his chest. He encountered the broken respirator clip and picked it up so he could look at it. “Fuck,” he groaned, “Ranisha’s gonna kill me.”

Finn looked over at Kun; he didn’t know who that was. Kun had a stricken look on her face, like this was a horrible thing to have happened. “I’m sorry,” Finn said, “I broke it, I couldn’t get it open and you were on fire.” He hadn’t known those clips were particularly expensive, but they both looked so upset.

Poe looked over at him, and his expression now threw into stark relief all the times he’d smiled or at least lit up to see Finn, because he looked absolutely devastated now.

“Finn,” Poe croaked. “Hey.” He smiled, but it was with some difficulty. “Hey, you pulled me out? Thanks.”

“I’ll explain to-- Ranisha,” Finn said. “I don’t-- know him. Or. Her.”

Poe’s smile changed into something else, but Finn couldn’t identify it. “It’s okay, Finn. She’s dead.”

That explained Kun’s expression. “Hey,” Kun said, “I gave your spare to Pava. I’ll get her to give it back. Remind me later. Are you sure you’re breathing, Dameron? I’d hate to have to replace my commander.”

Poe coughed again. “You’d be my replacement,” he rasped, “and you know that, you brat.” He sucked in a breath with some difficulty and tried to roll up onto his elbow. “Fire out?”

“No,” Kun said, “but almost.” Finn looked over, and the crews had mostly extinguished the flames, but there was still smoke rising. The X-wing was completely destroyed, just a smoldering wreck. The cockpit had been engulfed, he could tell, and it made him cold to think about Poe still trapped in there.

Poe subsided with a pained noise. “Stay there,” Finn said, “don’t move. You were dead.”

Poe gave him a faint smile, then frowned suddenly. “Holy shit, Finn,” he said, “your hands,” and he reached out and grabbed one of them. Finn’s palm was blistered, and there were bloody cuts on his fingertips and up his forearms, and he hadn’t noticed.

“Oh,” Finn said, and looked at his other hand, which was in roughly the same shape.

“Did you put the fire out with your _hands_ ,” Kun said, horrified, “oh Finn, you _did_ \-- oh shit. Well. We’ll patch you up. It’ll be all right.”

“Finn,” Poe said, and looked upset.

“Hey,” someone said, “hey, hey, hey,” and they were getting closer. Finn looked up, and it was the big reptile guy. He was chasing something small-- oh. BB-8.

“BB,” Finn said.

“BB!” Poe said, and sat up sharply, and it made him cough and double over and Finn caught him and held him.

“Ey’s okay,” the big reptile guy said. “Dameron, ey’s okay. Stars, Poe, I thought you were— you were on fire, brother, I didn’t think I’d get you— Droid, you need to calm yourself.”

Bb-8 was oddly silent, for all eir frantic body language. Ey rolled up and ran clumsily into Finn, rolling sideways along him and— “Ow!” Finn shouted, snatching his hand back; the droid’s metal was hot, smeared with soot; ey was fire-damaged.

“B!” Poe said, and Finn grabbed his hand before he could touch the droid with it.

“Ey’s really hot,” Finn said, alarmed, “you’ll burn yourself.”

“He’s okay,” the reptile guy said, kneeling down. “Look, B, he’s okay. Let me— you’ll damage yourself worse, stop rolling around.”

There was smoke coming off of BB-8, leaking from one of the seams of eir body, and the big fellow nudged the droid with his foot, urging em a small distance away so that he could spray em down with fire suppressant. “I’m going to have to disassemble you and repair you,” the man said.

“Is ey okay,” Poe said hoarsely.

“Eir processor’s fine,” the man said, “everything else is replaceable parts, Dameron. You?” And he crouched down, angling his flat reptilian head to fix one narrow slit-pupiled eye on Poe’s face.

“I’m fine,” Poe said, voice cracking and rattling. “Just needed a little thumping.” He coughed, and pushed his face into Finn’s shoulder with a shiver. Finn held him, smelling the acrid smoke in his hair.

“Looks like the medics are here,” the man said. “I’m going to take BB-8 back to the shop and ey’ll be repaired before they’re done bandaging you. No, B, I know you want to go with him, but we’re going to take you apart and make sure there’s nothing else on fire in there, it’s not safe to have you around people. You could make poisonous smoke, did you think of that?”

BB-8 subsided a little. Finn realized eir beeper must be too damaged to function, because ey hadn’t made a single sound. The white paint was all streaked with black soot, and the sensor array was visibly damaged, one of the lenses cracked.

“I’ll come see you if you’re not done when I get out,” Poe said. “It’s okay, Beep. I’m fine. They just have to bandage the burnt bits.”

 

 

 

Finn’s hands had started hurting by the time they got to the infirmary. He sat next to Poe as they both got worked on. They stripped Poe’s burnt coveralls off him and left him sitting there in his underwear, and his legs were singed, reddened in a few places, but there was no major damage. His torso was all red and raw where his harness had caught him, and would surely come up in bruises, but his lungs sounded okay and his heart was working right and they didn’t think he had a concussion. He just seemed logy and tired, and unhappy. He refused any painkillers and sat slumped with his arms crossed over his chest, not looking at anyone.

Finn got his hands and arms bandaged, and the nasty scrapes he’d gotten on his shoulders and belly from shoving through the broken windscreen and hanging there with all of Poe’s weight on him, but everything was minor. And the craft wasn’t salvageable, but they’d saved all the fuel in its tanks, had staved off an explosion, and had avoided damaging any other craft.

“Who was that guy?” Finn asked, after the silence started getting to him. “The big, uh, green fellow.”

“Goss,” Poe said. His voice was already a little better; they’d let him drink a little water as soon as they’d done some esoteric test or other. “Goss Toowers. Maintenance chief.”

“Good thing Goss got through that viewport when he did,” Finn said 

Poe nodded without looking up. “Yeah,” he said. “Toowers is a good dude.”

Finn leaned over to press his shoulder against Poe’s. “I’m just glad you’re all right.”

Poe managed a smile, turning his head and not quite looking at Finn. “Yeah,” he said. “Be a stupid way to die.”

“Kinda,” Finn said, scrunching up his nose.

 

 

Poe seemed surprised that Finn would want to sleep with him. “I won’t do you much good,” he said.

“You mean sex?” Finn asked, honestly puzzled. “Why would I expect you to? You were dead for a solid minute or two today. I just want to hang onto you and make sure you still wake up.”

“They said I’m fine,” Poe said. “I won’t have any lasting damage.”

“Yes but you _weren’t_ fine,” Finn said. “I think it’s natural for me to be upset and need a little bit to get over that.” He scratched his head. “Is that not-- let me know if I’m being weird again.”

Poe’s smile was another new one that Finn hadn’t seen before. He looked… maybe shyly pleased? “No,” Poe said, “it’s not weird I guess. Okay.”

Finn didn’t sleep very well; he didn’t have nightmares, exactly, he wasn’t prone to them, but as he lay there nearly asleep it kept coming back to him, the way Poe had looked with no breath moving in his chest. And then, the way Poe had looked at him when he’d first woken up, when he hadn’t seemed to know who Finn was.

Poe didn’t wake up in the night, but he did cry in his sleep, and Finn held him gently so as not to press on any bruises.

“Papa,” Poe sobbed. “Papa.” Finn didn’t need a translation for that one. He knew what the word meant. He just wasn’t sure he’d ever understand the concept.

 

_______

_______

 

 

Kalonia listened carefully as Dameron breathed in, held it, let it out. He was breathing all right, and didn’t seem to have any aftereffects of having suffocated to death and been pummeled back to life by Karé Kun, so that was good.

He looked small and tired. It was easy to forget, he wasn’t a big man. Like his father, he looked bigger than he was, when he was in motion. (His father _was_ pretty big, but gave off an impression of massiveness that his actual dimensions didn’t support. Kalonia missed Kes, a lot-- his steadiness, his bravery, his dry humor. She liked Poe on his own merits but it made her so sad to think of them separated.) His chest was all bruises, and there were harsh red lines along his shoulders where the safety harness had brush-burned him straight through his clothes. She let go of her stethoscope and stood in front of him where he was sitting on the exam table, and he looked up at her, plaintive, and a little frightened, and it was so familiar that she brought her hands up and did the standard eye exam out of sheer reflex.

“You’re fine,” she murmured, and he bit his lip, nodding resolutely.

He hesitated, though, looking down toward his feet. She waited, and after a moment he glanced back up, fleetingly. “Thanks, doc,” he said, almost a whisper.

She touched his shoulder, stopping him from getting up. “Are you sleeping okay?” she asked. BB-8 kept uploading brain scans with no explanation, but it wasn’t hard to put together that the astro was expecting there to be some medical significance to them. The thing was worried about him, and was probably justified, after everything Dameron had been through lately.

He looked at her, and as he caught her drift, his expression shaded through uncertainty to resignation. “Yeah,” he said, half-smiling a little.

“No nightmares, panic attacks, anything like that?” she asked.

He looked down. “Not much,” he said. His smile went tight. “No worse ‘n anybody.”

She gazed at him until he looked up again. He really did look like his mother. Shara had only been a little older than this when she’d died. Kalonia hadn’t been close to her, hadn’t been close enough to have met Poe as a kid, but she remembered Shara’s lovely eyes, her curving mouth, her black, black hair.

“I been a pain in the ass to you going on ten years now,” Dameron said, which was something she hadn’t even considered. “You ever get sick of flyboy hotshots coming in here with dumb problems, wasting your time?”

“Poe Dameron,” Kalonia said, “I don’t think you’ve ever had a dumb problem in your life.” She raised her hand, swiped her thumb carefully along his cheekbone, next to the edge of a bruise. He didn’t flinch, but his lower eyelid flickered. “You’ve never wasted my time.” She let her hand fall. “If I had enough forces to rotate you out for a couple of weeks and make you take some R&R I would, but I don’t, so I can’t.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “You just said I was okay.”

“You are,” she said, “but you deserve a rest, and I can’t give it to you.” She shook her head slightly. “Humans weren’t designed to live in fear. You’re handling it better than most but it’s just not right.”

He pushed to his feet, putting a hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to take a step back to give him space. “That’s what we’re fighting for,” he said. “So nobody has to live in fear.”

She looked up into his face. “I guess,” she said.

He picked up his shirt to pull it back on, and she went and opened the door. The General was standing in the waiting room, and looked past her and saw Dameron. Concern flickered across her face. “Just a follow-up,” Dameron said, coming to the door, and pulled his shirt over his head. “I’m fine.” He patted the General on the arm as he passed, a more familiar gesture than he normally used with her.

Organa watched him leave, then turned back to Kalonia.

“He’ll die for you, one day,” Kalonia said, moved to cruelty by this culmination of the day’s blows. She regretted it immediately, but it was too late to take it back, and it couldn’t be softened.

“I know,” the General said, misery carved deep into her face. “I know.”

 

_______________________

_______________________

 

It really fucking _hurt_ , but Poe figured badgering Kalonia for pain pills would get him grounded. And he really didn’t want that. So he tinkered with BB-8 for a while, reassuring himself the astromech was back to emself again even with a laundry list of replaced parts. Goss had spared no expense or trouble, enlisting the fabrication engineers’ help to get B back up to spec and then some— the new weatherseals were nicer, B informed him a little reverently, and every bit of B’s plating was immaculate, paint touched up in a couple of places and power source completely recharged and every single component immaculate and perfectly lubed. B hadn’t looked so good in years, and was a little vain with it, but also a little on-edge. If they kind of clung to each other a bit, nobody was around to see.

The two of them kicked around aimlessly a little while, restless and edgy and-- yeah, Poe was terrified, being dead for a minute or two at a time tended to leave you with a hard-to-shake backdrop of heebie-jeebies underneath everything else. So he took BB-8 and found his guitar and went and sat in the hangar with the other astromechs, and replaced the one worn string, and then replaced the other strings while he was at it, since somebody’d given him a new set so he might as well. He got it all tuned up again, and BB-8 happily settled in to help him learn the new songs off the holos ey’d downloaded way back while Gantl had been trying to kill Poe.

> _Everything is not enough_  
>  _And nothin' is too much to bear_  
>  _Where you've been is good and gone_  
>  _All you keep's the getting there_
> 
> _Well to live is to fly, all low and high_  
>  _So shake the dust off of your wings_  
>  _And the sleep out of your eyes_

An hour or two of work on that, and Poe’s ribs were screaming at him from the posture and motion required for the guitar, to say nothing of the breathing for singing, so he put the guitar away and packed himself up, and went back to the mess hall. BB-8 was a little overstimulated, and opted to stay with the other astros, beeping obscurely with them; Poe figured it was better that way, and took off, managing not to let on how bereft he felt.

There was nothing sadder than a bored pilot, he thought grimly, and decided to find Finn.

Nobody was in the command room. Nobody was around, really, anywhere. He poked around, and remembered that Finn often worked with the quartermaster and the logistics people when the command staff wasn’t up to much, so he went along to the supply building. He heard Finn’s voice, he thought, raised in a laugh, and it made him smile.

He went through the doorway and stood there a moment, letting his eyes adjust. Why was it so dark in here? Poe had excellent vision for a human but he couldn’t work in this. He took another step into the room before his brain caught up and he realized just why a young man and, by the sound of the giggles, a young woman, would be together in a dark room.

Oh.

He stopped where he was, and was about to turn to go when Finn said, “I told you, I’m not a gossip,” and stumbled out of an enclave between two sets of shelves. He was dishevelled, his shirt pulled out of alignment and his trousers a little askew. He could not have looked more obviously sex-rumpled if he’d been trying. He caught sight of Poe immediately, and the flicker of apprehension that crossed his face spoke more eloquently than anything else.

Then his face lit up, and he said, “Poe! I got you a new respirator clip!”

And that was that. Poe blinked; Finn couldn’t possibly know what the deal was with those damn clips. “Oh,” he said, “I-- it’s okay, I, ah--”

A human girl Poe didn’t know-- or yes he did, she was Berril or Betel or something, worked for the quartermaster-- stumbled out of the shelf enclave, giggling and pulling her shirt back down. “Oh,” Betel said, delighted, and immediately put her arms around Poe. “Have you come to join us?”

She slid her hand up his chest, and squeezed his shoulder square in the bruising, and Poe went stiff and said “Ow!” without taking any care for being tactful. He grimaced, and grabbed her hands. “Ribs,” he said, “ribs, ow,” and she exclaimed in contrite dismay, and Finn looked horrified, reaching out with his bandaged hands to fend Betel off him.

“No, no,” Poe said, over the babbled apologies, “no, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m just real sore. No, I was-- I just came to ask Finn a question and he already answered it. No-- I’m flattered, really, but no-- I couldn’t possibly, I’m just all bruises, I’m no fun.”

Berel. Her name was Berel. He remembered it now. “Ohh,” she said, “could we tend to your heroic wounds? Bring you pillows? What are you doing up and about? You poor thing!”

“I’m fine,” Poe said, “it’s all right.” He gently extricated himself from her-- she was human, she only had the standard limbs, but it was like she had about eight.

“I’ll come get that clip for you now,” Finn said.

“No,” Poe said, and it was too sharp, so he covered it with a grimace, as if at his ribs. “No-- ah. No, it’s fine, I won’t be needing it for a couple days, I just thought if you hadn’t, I’d put in the requisition.”

Finn was making as if to come with him, though, and that really-- Poe wasn’t going to think all that hard about why he really didn’t want to talk to Finn right now. “We could get it anyway,” Finn said, “Jerban had told me he thought it would be done.”

Poe shook his head. “I don’t really have time,” he said, “I’ve got,” and the secret to not being terrible at lying was to believe it was true, and the secret to believing it was to make it so, “I’ve got a shuttle piloting run coming up and you know those don’t use the chest boxes. I just wanted to put the req in before I left, I’ll be gone a couple of days.” Snap Wexley had a shuttle run coming up, but Snap could be ordered around if Poe got there before he started pre-flight checks, which he could probably still do if he didn’t waste any more time here.

“You don’t even get a day off for dying?” Finn asked.

Poe shrugged, which was a mistake, but he managed not to let on how much it hurt. “Shit still has to happen,” he said. “I’m just glad I’m still here to do it.”

Finn was still following him out of the building. Oh, he probably wanted to talk. That’d be a healthy and reasonable thing to do, and it would be what Poe would advise him to do (and in fact had been advising the pilotlings and technicianlings on this sort of thing kind of endlessly for the last couple of weeks), but it was absolutely not what Poe was going to do right now.

He snapped his fingers and paused, turning away from the airfield and toward the living quarters. “Shit,” he said, then glanced back toward the airfield. He looked over at Finn. “Hey, could you do me a favor?”

“Yeah,” Finn said, and he never said no to anybody, and that was probably what the problem was. Poe’s chest squeezed painfully, thinking of how fucking nice this fucking kid was. Ow. Ow. Ow.

“I left my jacket in my hut,” Poe said, which was true. He’d also left literally everything else he’d need for this kind of thing in his hut. He was not dressed to fly a shuttle mission, and was not prepared in any way. “Could you grab it? I’m running a little late, I don’t have time to get it.”

“Sure,” Finn said. “Is it by the door?”

“Yeah,” Poe said. He grinned, which wasn’t really hard to do at all, even now. “Thanks so much, man, you’re a pal!”

“Of course,” Finn said, and went away down the path, and Poe turned for the airfield.

It was a milk run. Snap would be bored out of his mind. He’d be glad not to go. Poe stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to control his breathing. Bruised bone was a bitch and a half but at least he knew for sure it wasn’t anything more serious.

 

“What? No,” Snap said.

“Absolutely yes,” Poe said.

“There’s _no way_ you’re cleared to fly,” Snap said, “you look like shit, Dameron.”

“You can check my status right now,” Poe said, and he knew it was true because he’d noticed that he’d stayed on green this whole time. Either they’d forgotten to update him, or he’d been on conditional; either way, he knew taking the recommended pain pills would get him red-listed so he hadn’t. “I even had the doc double-check. I am one hundred percent green.”

“Like hell you are,” Snap said, and actually had the audacity to call his bluff, using the shuttle console to pull up the roster. But sure enough, there Poe was, green. Yesterday’s incident wasn’t recorded, but Snap didn’t look closely enough to see that. He just looked disbelievingly at the green status marker. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m in a joking mood?” Poe asked.

“No!” Snap said. “You look like you just got the shit beat out of you, Dameron!”

“My shit is fine, Wexley,” Poe said. “I’m pulling rank. I’m stealing your milk run.”

Snap crossed his arms over his chest. “You just want the bonus so you can buy presents for your new sweetheart,” he said.

 _Ouch._ Poe had forgotten there were bonuses for the boring civvie taxi duty runs, because they were still funded from some Republic thing that had been set up before everything had gone to shit, so those credits were already there. He rolled his eyes. “You can have the damn bonus, Snap,” he said. “I got reasons, I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

“Academy brats always pull fuckin’ rank,” Snap said, without much rancor, and gathered his stuff. He noticed Poe’s (at least materially) unencumbered state. “You know this is an overnight, right? Where’s your stuff? I was about to start preflight.”

“Finn’s bringing my stuff,” Poe said. “Go on, Snap, take a hike.” He absolutely didn’t want the two of them to intersect.

“Fine,” Snap said. “I actually didn’t want to do this one anyway, you’re doing me a favor, but for real, Dameron, you look like hell and you should be in bed. You know this thing pulls like a damn bantha, are you sure you didn’t get your ribs bruised yesterday? It’s gonna be agony.”

“I know how to fly these things,” Poe said. “I told you, I’m fine. Clear out, you jerk.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Snap said. He got out of the ship, and Poe heard Finn give him a breathless greeting, but fortunately they didn’t talk any longer than that. He called up the preflight checklist to give himself something to look at.

“Here’s your jacket,” Finn said. “Poe--”

“Thanks,” Poe said, taking the jacket. It wasn’t hard to look at Finn’s face, so radiant with life, and smile at him. He was beautiful, he was a miracle. He wasn’t Poe’s. “I really appreciate it, I can’t believe I forgot it.” He couldn’t possibly put it on, his shoulders wouldn’t move like that. That was why he hadn’t been wearing it already. He slung it over the back of the pilot’s seat. He’d worry about getting it onto himself when there were no witnesses.

“I can’t believe they’re making you fly a shuttle run after yesterday,” Finn said. “With how bruised-up you are-- why couldn’t Snap do it?”

Poe shook his head a little, smiling. “It’s all right,” he said, “I asked to do it. I like doing them, Finn.” He turned back to the checklist and expanded the interface showing him which positions the switches should be in for the current settings of the transport.

“I feel like we should talk,” Finn said, having obviously screwed up his courage to say it.

Poe made the closest approximation he could currently manage of a shrug. “If you want,” he said, “when I get back. I kind of have to concentrate on these checklists.”

“Okay,” Finn said, looking hurt.

Poe smiled at him. It was so easy to smile at this kid. He was like contained sunshine, even with a cloud in front of him.  “Don’t look like that,” Poe said. “It’s fine.”

“I think I hurt your feelings,” Finn said.

Poe shook his head a little, and made himself clap Finn on the shoulder. “No, hey,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Now clear out, and we’ll catch up when I get back, all right?”

Finn gave him a dubious look, clearly wanting to say something else, but obediently left the transport, and Poe let his breath out and leaned on the back of the pilot’s chair.

 

Snap was right, it was agony, but it was a distraction, and that was absolutely necessary.

There were a bunch of little kids on the transport, and Poe sucked it up and let them sit on his lap and elbow him, and taught them how to pretend-fly a transport, and let them use the comm, and it got him out of a jam in the end.

“What’s your designation,” the comm crackled, a woman’s voice. It was a T-85 X-Wing, which meant Republic, but what that even meant nowadays was subject to a lot of interpretation.

“Now’s your chance, Nitti,” Poe said. “Like we’ve been practicing.”

Nitti, five and gap-toothed with a head of glorious kinky curls, looked starry-eyed. “Really?” She had woken up far too early, and to spare her frazzled mother, Poe had let her come up and stay with him so everyone else could get more sleep. Space travel was really hard on little kids’ internal clocks.

“Yes,” Poe said, “but be serious, this is serious. All right?”

Nitti held down the button like he’d shown her, and said, “This is Transport T-nine-nine-five-two-zero, New Republic authorization!”

She let go of the button, and Poe said, “Good, but you didn’t state our designation or destination. Do you remember them?” Nitti nodded solemnly, but the comm crackled with response first.

“Are you old enough to fly that thing?” the X-Wing asked, laughing.

“Humanitarian designation,” Nitti said, and Poe held the button when her finger started to slip. “Destination Yavallan system, civilian transport!”

“Very good,” Poe said, as he let go of the button.

“And what’s your identification?” the other pilot asked.

“She’s asking who are you,” Poe clarified.

Nitti held the button down. “I’m Nitti! I’m five! I’m the big sister!”

The other pilot laughed. “That’s great! I’m Sanata Callis, I’m twenty-nine! But who’s flying that thing?”

Poe’s blood ran cold for a moment. Sanata Callis was his ex-sister-in-law, Uxonia Gantl’s friend. She personally hated him, held him responsible for having lured her sister out to a dangerous posting with him, blamed him for the pirate attack that had destroyed the building where his then-already-ex-wife had worked. Poe took the comm before Nitti could say anything, and winked at Nitti. “I forgot to fix the paperwork,” he said, “so I gotta say what’s on it.” He held the button down. “Temmin Wexley, ma’am,” he said. Thank the stars. Wexley wasn’t Academy, Callis wouldn’t ever have met him.

“Temmin Wexley,” Callis said thoughtfully. “I don’t know you.”

“Been a pilot a long time, ma’am,” Poe said.

“He is the best pilot!” Nitti butted in, and Poe thought, _the last thing I need is for this kid to blow me in_.

“I bet he is,” Callis said.

“Hey,” Poe said, “can you go get your mom?”

“Okay,” Nitti said, and jumped down and went running to the back of the transport.

“Do you need an escort?” Callis asked. “We have reports of unrest in that sector.”

 _No_ , Poe thought, but then he had a cargo of sleepy civilians to worry about, and that wouldn’t do. “Unrest,” he said. “I didn’t hear anything about that.”

“There’s been a lot of Resistance activity there,” Callis said. “That’s generally a bad sign.”

Poe very, very carefully considered his response. She could be calling his bluff; Wexley wasn’t Academy, but he had some cachet for his youthful role in the Rebel Alliance. While he wasn’t necessarily known Resistance, there were about zero people who’d be surprised by it. “If it’s the Resistance, I’ll take my chances,” he said. “I don’t wanna draw attention with an escort, this is a routine shuttle.”

“There are reports of a lot of pirate groups calling themselves Resistance,” Callis said. “I don’t know that it’s as safe as you think.”

“I got some fondness for the ol’ starbird,” Poe said, referring to the old Rebel Alliance insignia that the Resistance had adopted. “And as for pirates, that one’s news to me too. I know this sector pretty well, I think I’ll be all right. Thanks for the offer, though, I know you guys must be stretched pretty thin.”

“I don’t know that I trust your judgement on this, Wexley,” Callis said. “You’re going to risk five-year-old Nitti and her little siblings on your gut feeling about a sentimental symbol co-opted by traitors?”

 _Never change, Sanata_ , Poe thought. She had always been a fucking delight, even before she’d gone off the deep end. “No,” he said, “but I am definitely not going to get a transport full of little kids wrapped up in a political debate with a ship full of guns. If you’re denying us passage then go ahead and do that and we can both contact our superiors, but if not, let us go peacefully.”

“Big talk from a shuttle pilot,” Callis said. “Stand by while I check your itinerary.”

Nitti’s mother Halla came up with Nitti in her arms. She had her hair carefully wrapped for sleep, and was blinking owlishly in the light from the control panel. She’d been up a lot with the colicky baby, and now the overactive small child, and Poe regretted disturbing her, but she was the de facto village leader. “Is something wrong?”

Poe shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said, “we’ve just got a really cranky Fleet X-Wing being persnickety about my credentials, and I figured I should get some adult backup. Not that Nitti’s not a great comm operator.”

“Persnickety,” Halla said. She sat down in the empty copilot’s chair; this wasn’t a rig that needed two, so it was vacant.

“She thinks this sector is dangerous because it’s full of Resistance,” Poe said. “I happen to know her from when I was at the Academy, and it’s a long story, but she currently thinks I’m Temmin Wexley because I forgot to switch out the names on the manifest. Given the tension, I’m just not gonna correct her on that, okay?”

Halla nodded. She gestured to the comm, and Poe made a go-ahead gesture. “This is Halla Unda,” she said, “I’m the civilian leader on this vessel, is there an issue?”

“Your pilot is refusing an escort into a sector with reports of piracy,” Callis said. “It arouses suspicion.”

“The reports in this sector were of Resistance activity,” Halla said, “and since the Resistance is an organization operating under sanction of the Republic, I have no fear for my safety or that of my people. I support my pilot’s decision to decline an escort and thank you for your consideration.”

Poe could see Sanata had downloaded the ship’s manifest, and he also knew Wexley’s name was still on it. And the paperwork was in perfect order. There was nothing for her to doubt.

“Very well,” Callis said. “Be it on your head. On your way, then.”

Nitti crawled back up into Poe’s lap, elbowing him painfully in the ribs. “Say goodbye, Nitti,” Poe said, when he could speak, and Halla held the comm handset out.

“Bye lady pilot!” Nitti said.

 

 

______

______

 

 

“Do you think you know everything you need to know?” General Organa asked, looking at Finn over her datapad. He was sitting across her desk from her, as he often did now, looking at his own datapad, and he looked back over at her and caught his teeth between his lip.

“I think I do,” he said, “but, if I knew I didn’t know something, I’d’ve looked it up already, you know?”

“True,” she said, cracking a small smile. “Well, you have my best people with you. If there’s a gap in your knowledge, they’ll know how to fill in.”

Finn nodded resolutely. “They are good,” he said. He had Major Ematt seconded to him as support and it was all wrong, rank-wise, but it made sense given the structure of it. Ematt was a reconnaissance specialist, and sending him in as lead would send all the wrong messages. Finn was an unknown, and he’d make a much better impression with the politicians they were trying to meet.

Finn’s sense of etiquette was all strange. He knew this. He had impeccable manners; all Stormtroopers were highly trained in uniformity and deference and neatness of habit and this generally gave him an air, he had learned, of being very well-bred. But he had a lot of crucial gaps, especially when it came to speaking up when not directly spoken to, and taking cues for small talk, and the like. He’d worked on it, and had observed a lot of things, and General Organa had given him some very good pointers, but he was still self-conscious.

He almost would rather it was a combat mission, but that wasn’t what anyone had need of, at the moment. Not from him. And he sort of got it; these people needed to work with him on something high-stakes but not life-and-death. They knew he could shoot, but they didn’t trust him to know yet when to shoot.

He didn’t totally trust himself with that either, though for different reasons. (He didn’t think it was widely known that Jakku had been his first combat mission and he hadn’t fired a shot. He’d fought since then, but not as part of a force. It was different.)

“Is there anything else?” Organa asked. Finn looked at her, and realized she wasn’t asking him about the mission anymore.

“I fucked up,” he said, “with Poe.” He made a face. “I think know what I did wrong. I suspected at the time it was a mistake, but I didn’t know what else to do. And I think I know how to fix it, but not if he won’t talk to me.” He shrugged. “Everything’s a learning experience, I guess.”

“He’s not… currently at his best,” Organa said, with a sad little frown. “I hope he hasn’t hurt you too much. I hadn’t thought of that, Finn, and that’s not fair to you. I’m just so accustomed to trusting him. And I don’t normally— involve myself, on this sort of level, with this sort of thing.”

“I made the mistake of not gathering sufficient intelligence about him,” Finn said. “He’s the kind of guy that’s easy to underestimate.”

“That’s true,” Organa said.

“I even had some warning,” Finn said, “but I just had no idea how much I didn’t know.”

She nodded. “He’s hard to get a handle on,” she said.

“Well,” Finn said. “I presume that’s why everyone’s so surprised by his current behavior.”

She nodded again, and made a wry face. “I wouldn’t say I’m surprised,” she said. “Honestly I thought he’d have some kind of breakdown before this, but I haven’t had any other options but to keep him on as he was. You and I both have had better things to do than worry about him; it’s not appropriate for me to stick my nose in more than I have. I don’t think this is as dire as everyone else seems to think it is. I imagine he’ll come back just fine. I’ll still yell at him, but he hasn’t come through everything he has just to give up now.”

“People think he won’t come back?” Finn asked, suddenly alarmed. It occurred to him that he wasn’t going to hear most of the rumors about Poe, since people assumed they were so close.

Organa smiled at him. “They think he’s not okay to fly,” she said. “But I know him. He’ll do stupid things, sure, but not with a shuttle full of children. He wouldn’t have gone if he couldn’t do it.”

Finn nodded to himself, considering that. Then it struck him. “Is he in trouble?” he asked.

Organa shook her head. “Like I said, I’ll speak to him, but if he hasn’t actually harmed anyone I won’t pursue it further.” She made a face. “I think the doctor is a great deal more upset with him than I am. I’ll let her deal with it.”

 

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

(I was going to post this somewhere else, separately, as it's a flashback and doesn't fit in the story, but it'd be a spoiler anywhere else. It's peripheral, but I wrote it and wanted to put it somewhere, so here it is.)

_Epilogue:_

 

Yoruth was the one who came to get her, and it was the most haste anyone had moved with in this house for three days since the news had come, pounding footsteps down the hall and a thud at the door. Alana looked up in some surprise; she hadn’t moved in hours. “Mama,” Yoruth said at the door, flustered, “mama, he’s here.”

“Who’s here?” Alana asked, finding the damp cloth she’d been holding and blotting her face with it; only his urgency could have induced her to move, to stand up.

“Poe,” Yoruth said. At her blank look, he said, “Poe _Dameron_.”

 

In the eternity since the awful moment Alana had found out her daughter was dead, she had thought of many things, out in the void where most of her seemed to live now. She had thought of facing her daughter’s beautiful disaster of an ex-husband, she’d thought of saying terrible things to him and watching his pretty face crease up. But she had never actually expected to do any of those things. And now, looking at Poe Dameron, she couldn’t say anything at all.

He was standing in the doorway, clearly having been let in and then abandoned by the excitable Yoruth (who was taking all of this very hard, of course). He was not in his uniform, he was in a battered leather jacket. He was unshaven and hollow-eyed and as completely unconcerned with manners and niceties as Alana herself was.

Their divorce had been a mess. Ranisha had holomessaged her frequently about it, and had apparently been unable to make a clean break. It was clear Ranisha still cared deeply for him, even if he wouldn’t be sensible. And Alana had found sympathy for him in her heart, at the time. In order for them to have the life together that they wanted, one of them was going to have to give up on ambition, and it couldn’t be Ranisha, her inventions were too brilliant to deprive humanity. She was a genius.

Perhaps Dameron was likewise a genius at flying, but anyone could fly, and flying slightly better was hardly going to improve the lot of humanity the way, say, a new more efficient air recycler that extended the effective range of a small ship (Ranisha's first major invention) would. He had reacted badly to this logic, and at the time Alana hadn’t really been able to blame him.

Now, looking at him, he was a hollowed-out empty shell of the vital creature she’d known him as, and he stood staring at her as blankly as she was sure she was staring at him.

“Dameron,” Alana managed to say.

He took a breath, as if he’d been forgetting to breathe this whole time. He tried to speak, abandoned the word, and instead said, “I brought some of her things. I thought-- you should have them.” He slid a canvas bag off his shoulder and held it out.

“Tell me what happened,” Alana demanded, taking the bag he proffered in numb fingers.

He flinched, and she realized his hand was shaking. “The,” he said, but stopped to regroup. “Raiders attacked. We had no warning. We scrambled the X-Wings and I got into the air about twenty seconds too late to prevent them taking a run at the fabrication facilities.”

“Raiders,” Alana said. “Why.”

“We’d been skirmishing with them for months,” Dameron said. “They were raiding the hyperlane stopover, and we had stepped up our patrols to counteract them, and they were in an arms race with us. They got enough equipment to make a pre-emptive strike and they took out our hangar hoping to get our whole fleet so we couldn’t keep our patrols up. Instead they mostly just--” He had to stop, and swallow hard. “Killed our whole ground crew and fabrication team.”

“Including my daughter,” Alana said.

Dameron flinched like he’d been shot, and said nothing, made no sound. He was dead gray and bloodless, and trembling intermittently, and Alana would lay odds he hadn’t slept since it had happened.

“She had five days of work left before she was to come back here,” Alana said.

“I know,” Dameron said, and it was barely a breath between his lips.

Yoruth hadn’t stayed in the room, Alana realized; he’d gone and fetched his surviving sister. Sanata and Poe had been friendly, initially. They were both Fleet pilots, Sanata a couple of years behind him, and they’d had a friendly rivalry. Alana had amused herself that Sanata clearly had a little bit of a crush on Poe in the beginning, because he was such an ace pilot and rising star in the fiercely competitive Fleet. But Sanata had naturally taken her sister’s side in the divorce. It only made sense. They were blood kin.

Sanata burst into the room, eyes wild, and pointed at Dameron.

“You,” she said, breathing hard. “You as good as killed her yourself!”

Dameron twitched minutely, but said nothing, turning to look at Sanata.

“She would never have been in such a stupid, meaningless, miserable backwater of a _hole_ if not for you and your _stupid_ job,” Sanata shouted. “She would be _here_ , and she would be _safe_ , and she would still be a _genius_ and doing _important_ things!”

Dameron inclined his head slightly, gave a little bob of a nod, then let his chin sink down, not raising his head again.

“You’re nothing, Dameron, you’re nothing, you never even deserved her in the first place,” Sanata raged. “What are you? Nothing! And you _had_ to have a good posting, you _had_ to pick a hot one so you could get some action and get a promotion faster, and you _had_ to drag my sister into that kind of _stupid pointless garbage_ , and here we are. I hope you’re happy!”

“I didn’t request that posting,” Dameron said, stung into a reply, but he didn’t raise his head and it came out dull and quiet.

“You _certainly_ did,” Sanata said.

“We requested a posting where she could work,” Dameron said, inflectionless. “That one was third choice. We needed a posting with a lead fabrication engineer’s slot open.”

“And coincidentally,” Sanata hissed, “a posting for an ambitious hot-shot pilot, in a dangerous sector with plenty of pirates to worry about!”

“That’s enough,” Alana said; her own grief had her somewhat paralyzed, but from her unnatural distance she reflected that she could, possibly, see the shredded remnants of Dameron’s spirit actually leaving his body. If this kept up the man was going to actually expire right in her doorway.

“I’m just getting started,” Sanata said. “There isn’t enough of anything to encompass this.”

“No,” Alana said, “you’re done, right now. Yoruth, take your sister back to her room.”

Sanata looked at her, but knew better than to defy her mother. Yoruth pulled her out of the room as she kept her eyes locked on Dameron. He did not watch her go, but stared at the floor.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” Alana asked, mechanical practicality taking over.

He blinked, and raised his head a little, though he still wasn’t looking at her. “Yes,” he said, though she had no real confidence he even knew what she’d asked.

“It’s not your fault,” Alana said, “and I can’t blame you for trying to keep her, but you took her away from me. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Thank you for bringing this,” Alana said, gesturing to the bag, which she’d apparently set on the floor.

He nodded, not really moving his head. Finally he said, “It was hard to accept that I couldn’t stay with her. I think I could have reconciled myself to it, eventually, maybe. But the idea of living in a universe where she isn’t anywhere, I don’t know if I can do that.”

“I don’t know either,” she said. He raised his head finally, and looked at her.

“I don’t know how to do that,” he said.

“Neither do I,” she said.

He collected himself enough to turn and open the door. “Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye, Poe Dameron,” Alana said, and decided that would be the last time his name would be spoken in her house.

 

She was right, but only because her house was on Hosnia and so was destroyed, along with her and her son, when the First Order blew up the entire system.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usually I'm startled when people accuse chapters of being upsetting but I feel like this one's upsetting so, sorry?


	9. With One Star Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This completes this arc but there's a sequel that will go up in the next day at most.  
> This chapter contains the first version of what became my most-popular-ever Tumblr post and was eventually podficced here: [Dealing With Your Inevitable Crush On Poe Dameron](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6200761).  
> (Spoiler: It was not a humor piece when first I wrote it.)  
> Along with some totally un-negotiated mild kink and a little bit of possible embarrassment squick, so, sorry about that. I promise it's not too bad. If you're upset at the thought of how embarrassed Poe is by the holovid, that's part of why I wrote [Morale Surveys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6228322), to make myself feel better about it-- they really are his friends, and they really aren't intending to hurt him with their attention. So if you need resolution, that's the resolution, it's meant to be a distant sequel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter soundtrack is, well. It got complicated so I'm just going to go with [She Moved Through The Fair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DQnS18EeWM), which I have a Sinead O'Connor recording of here, but it's one of the ones I always used to perform at seisuns. It's my oh there's a lot of people staring at me and I've forgotten everything I ever knew song, because you can always remember the opening lines.  
> I hope it suits, at least. I don't know if the next section will have chapter soundtracks! We'll see tomorrow when I start posting it.  
>  _She went her way homeward with one star awake_  
>  _As the swan in the evening moves over the lake_

Of all the people to be waiting for him when he got back, the transport heavy with supplies, Poe hadn’t really expected Dr. Kalonia. He opened his mouth to greet her and paused, because she was doing her Legendary Thin-Lipped Stare Of Disapproval that meant you were in trouble, and it single-handedly transported him back about a decade. “Uh,” he said, “hi, Doc.”

“What were you thinking?” she demanded immediately.

“Uh,” he said. He really should have expected this, come to think of it.

“Don’t play innocent with me,” she said. “You took advantage of the fact that your file wasn’t updated to take you off the fly list. You knew you weren’t fit to pilot a spacecraft and you did it anyway. Why did you do that?”

Goss Toowers was fastening the shuttle down to the landing pad, and he studiously ignored them; Bollie Prindel had come over with his datapad and also was feigning temporary deafblindness. It was very tactful. Poe appreciated it.

“You didn’t prescribe me anything,” Poe said woodenly, “so the file was accurate.”

“You don’t need a prescription,” Kalonia said. “All you had to do was pick some up. I know you know how to do that. It was in your hands. Don’t act like I approved this.”

“I’m not saying you did,” Poe said. It was true; the option for medication was there, but taking the effective kind would tick his status to red until he got it manually cleared again. He hadn’t even bothered with one of the little kind like you took for headaches, because it might have reminded them to update his chart with the post-crash visit. He hadn’t taken any stimulants either, and that had probably been stupid but it was probably good for him to go old-fashioned for a couple days. “But that’s how that works. If I didn’t need any medication, I was fit to fly. I wanted to get offworld, so I did.” He glanced over at the shuttle, which was, he figured, pretty noticeably not in flames or destroyed. “Clearly, I was fit to fly.”

“I _will_ ground you,” Kalonia said, “for a psych eval.”

Poe gazed levelly at her. He was past having any kind of opinion on pretty much anything, he realized. His entire _being_ hurt, from his toes to the roots of his hair, but he was finally, finally exhausted enough that he knew he could sleep for a while. “Okay,” he said, “if you feel that’s appropriate.”

Kalonia stared up at him, disarmed. “What?”

He shook his head a little, frowning; he couldn’t shrug, his shoulders were one big immobile mass of screaming pain. Maybe BB-8 was right. If his brain was fucked-up enough that it showed up on scans-- if he was acting strangely enough that his droid had been afraid he’d kill them both-- “If you think that’s the best course, naturally, you should do that. Can I hit the ‘fresher first, maybe shave, or is it urgent?”

“Do you want me to?” she asked, baffled. “Did you do this so I would?”

He screwed up his face. “No,” he said, “it’d be a pain in the ass if you do, but I can’t be a hardass to all my people about mental health shit without doing the same for myself. If you think I’m doing something irresponsible, I’m duty-bound to take you seriously.”

She shook her head very slightly, as if disbelieving him. He was so tired. “What _do_ you want?” she asked.

He considered that seriously. “Silence,” he said, “total stillness, a warm blanket, and about twelve hours.”

 

She called his bluff but all that really meant was that he got his sleep in the medbay. Which was actually kind of nice, because they kept the back room really warm and had softer blankets than he did, and also the bed there didn’t smell like Finn, and it all meant Poe could ignore all of his problems and mentally regress to an age where maybe he’d regularly gotten the shit beat out of him but it was usually in the name of training him and nobody actually genuinely wanted him dead or crippled. Kalonia gave him one of the good kind of pain-relief stims too, so all the shit plaguing him went warm and loose and far away and let him curl comfortably on his side and float away pleasantly.

Also he knew nobody would be looking for him here, and that was kind of nice.

Someone eventually came to look for him. He woke up and it was dim in the room, and his head was in someone’s lap, and they were petting his hair, and he was still pretty high so he spent a while just enjoying it without wondering at all who it was. After a bit, though, he woke up enough that he rolled over a little, and looked up to see that it was the General.

“Hi,” he said.

“I expected that kind of stunt from you maybe a decade ago, my child,” Organa said. She didn’t look mad. She looked sad. That was the kind of thing that was a bad sign. Mad was easier to deal with. You could argue with mad. You really couldn’t argue with sad.

“Mm-hmm,” Poe said. He was still pretty floaty. It wasn’t bad at all. He was supposed to be better than this but it was hard to care. Whatever he’d done was probably pretty bad. But she was still petting his hair, and he really really liked it, it was extremely, uncomplicatedly pleasant in a way really nothing was.

“You don’t even remember what you did,” Organa observed.

“Mmm-nn,” he said, letting his eyes sink shut and shaking his head no very slightly. It did strike him that there was something odd about her accent, and it took him thinking about that to recognize that it was that she was speaking to him in Iberican. It changed her voice, made her speech softer and more familiar.

He yawned, and it hurt a little to breathe, and that meant he started to remember. Oh yeah. Altaira’s X-Wing had tried to claim another victim. Mm-hmm. And Kun had resuscitated him, which was actually sort of nice, because he knew she wouldn’t have been creepy about it. He’d bought her a thank-you gift while they were loading up the supplies in the transport; he looked forward to giving that to her. And then he remembered the rest of it, and pulled a face. “Aw, now I remember,” he said, and his voice was really hoarse; he must’ve been out a solid ten hours at least, maybe more. “I was enjoying the obliviousness.”

“Time’s up,” Organa said. But she was still petting his hair, letting the curls wrap around her fingers, rubbing the pads of her fingers against his scalp lightly, and it was deeply, deeply pleasant. She was using both hands, too, one holding the top of his head steady and the other digging in gently to the muscles at the base of his skull. He let his eyes roll closed again.

“Hnnng,” he said. Could he explain himself? He’d had an X-wing explode on him, gotten rattled, had a misunderstanding with a friend-- okay, that still really hurt, somewhere inside his chest past all the bone-bruise pain-- and had fled the scene to hide. He yawned again, and when he spoke this time he took the effort to make it come out in Basic. “Yeah, it was a kind of juvenile stunt, but overall pretty harmless, provided I didn’t miss anything while I was offworld having a silent snit where nobody who knew anything would be able to bother me.”

“Why were you in a snit?” Organa asked.

“I _died_ ,” Poe said, inadvertently switching back to Iberican, “for like, a minute, and it made me feel real shitty about my life choices.” He wished he could stop yawning, it really hurt every time he did it. “Ow,” he said, as his jaw snapped shut. “It was all very adolescent of me but I’ve had a hard couple-- years really, so I just-- I mentally regressed to being twentyish and threw a fit and did the only constructive thing I could think of to do, which was to steal Snap’s shuttle mission. He can still have the bonus, I didn’t mean to cut him out of that.”

“You have had a hard couple of years,” Organa said.

“Pretty much everybody has?” Poe said. “I’m not saying I’m special, I’m just saying,” and he waved his hand a little. “I’m sorry and I hope I didn’t fuck anything up.”

“You’re fine,” Organa said.

“I mean,” Poe said, waking up a little more, and he rubbed his face. “Clearly, I’m a jackass.” She took her hands out of his hair, more’s the pity, so he pushed himself up, rubbing his face with both hands-- ow, okay, the stim was wearing off-- and managed to get both eyes pointing at her. Ruthlessly, he wrenched his speech back into Basic. This conversation didn’t need to be in his mother-tongue. “I’m not into self-flagellation so I’m not gonna beg for punishment but I mean. It’s inappropriate for me to be a brat, I’m a grown fucking man with a command and we’re at war.”

“If you want me to put you on leave,” Organa said, “I can, or I can suspend you, but as it happens, you honestly didn’t miss anything, we knew where you were, and we were just alarmed because the doctor wasn’t sure your flight-ready status was accurate. But you didn’t really do anything _wrong_ , per se.”

“I don’t want you to put me on leave,” Poe said. He couldn’t look at her. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, which was a living disaster, and stretched gingerly.

She watched him, impassive, maybe calculating, it was hard to tell. He let himself collapse and wrap his arms around himself. “You seem to be doing your best to sabotage any chance of having a reasonable relationship with Finn,” she said, switching back to Iberican. “I had thought it might do you both good, but I think I’d underestimated how badly everything has affected you, lately.”

Of course she knew. She always knew. Anyway, Finn spent an awful lot of time with her, when he wasn’t learning about the ways of love from the rest of the base-- as he should be, Poe reminded himself ruthlessly, it wasn’t like _he_ had a lot to offer the guy. So it only made sense that she knew.

“I wasn’t going to,” Poe said miserably. “I wasn’t going to-- believe me, I know, I’ve got no business--”

“Poe,” Organa said, “shh,” and she pulled him into an embrace. He couldn’t keep himself from shivering, just for a moment, but he didn’t cry, which would have been too embarrassing to survive. She curled her hand around the back of his neck, and her hand was small and cool and not at all like his father’s, but the position was the same, and he let himself have this, for just a moment.

“I’m not okay enough to be with anybody but I’m so fucking _miserable_ on my own,” he said, quietly, desperately, into her soft shoulder. “I’m a goddamned mess and there’s nothing to be done for it, and I’ll only hurt him if I push him away but I’ll hurt him worse if I drag him into the bullshit that is me.”

She murmured one of the endearments that his mother had always called him, and he decided not to think about that any more. “He’s a grown man,” she said, “and fortunately, he has other friends, Poe.”

That hurt, but it was good. “He does,” Poe said. _It’s not a rejection, it’s a sign that he knows he can’t rely on you_ , Poe told himself firmly. _It’s healthy and it’s good._ “I should. I should still. Apologize.” It was hard to say.

“Well, you should at least talk, but it can wait,” Organa said, letting go of his neck to pet his hair. “He’s on a mission for me at the moment.”

Poe sat up to look at her. “He is?”

She laughed gently, and put her hand on his cheek. “Don’t look so shocked,” she said. “We all know how sharp he is.”

“I wish I’d seen him decimate the firing range,” Poe said wistfully. “That would’ve been something.”

“It was,” Organa said. “Peazy recorded it. I’ll have her give the holovid to BB-8.”

“I’ll look forward to that,” Poe said, smiling despite himself. He was so gone on the kid. But Finn was going to be a hero, now, the kind everybody knew about, and he’d definitely be able to find himself someone better for him than Poe could be. “What’s his mission?”

“Diplomacy, for starters,” Organa said.

Poe grinned. “Bet he’ll do better than me,” he said.

“Well,” Organa said, “to be fair, I’m not sending him to people he has an awkward history with.”

“He could maybe help replace some of what Korr was working on,” Poe said, more somberly. Losing Sella had been hard.

“Maybe a little,” Organa said. “He’ll probably be military, though, not diplomatic primarily. He’s-- Poe, he’s very good.”

“I know,” Poe said. “I-- I know.” _Too good for the likes of you, flyboy,_ he thought, and ruthlessly kept himself from bitterness. _Self-pity is only for those who deserve it_. At least Finn could take care of himself.

  


__________________

  


Finn came back really energized from his first real mission as a Captain in the Resistance. His people were elated, the mission had been a success-- they’d secured official recognition from a major Republic outpost, and as such had a powerful new ally and most importantly, more money and resources-- and the celebration turned into an all-out party.

Everyone knew his name, everyone congratulated him, everyone wanted to talk to him, and it was exhilarating and wonderful, and it took him until the music started to notice that he hadn’t seen Poe. Or BB-8. There was someone else playing a guitar, but no Poe.

“Where’s Dameron?” he asked, gesturing at the other guitar player, who he didn’t know yet. Pamich Nerro, the lead dispatcher, looked thoughtfully around.

“Oh,” she said, “he might not be out of the med bay yet?”

“Med bay,” Finn said, alarmed.

“Hey,” Pamich said to the uncanny-looking protocol droid-- she’d always given Finn the creeps anyway-- “Peazy, have you seen Dameron?”

“No,” Peazy said, and beeped and went alarmingly still as she consulted something internally. “He was released from medbay and his flight status is green again.”

“Why was he in medbay?” Finn asked.

Peazy twitched unnervingly. “Psychological evaluation,” she chirped.

“Oh my stars and days,” Finn said, feeling like his stomach had dropped right out of his body.

“Well,” Peazy said, picking up on his distress, “clearly it went well, since the duration of his stay was less than twenty-four hours.”

Finn stared at her. Reconditioning could take as little as six hours. He’d know.

“Oh,” Pamich turned back to say, having already halfway moved on from the conversation, “he’s tuning up now.”

Sure enough, Poe had just sat down on a bench a little distance from the first guitarist, and was laughing as he fiddled with his autotuner. One of the lights was blinking red, and he made a face and reached to correct it.

Finn had no awareness of how he’d crossed the room, whether he’d run into anyone or how on earth he’d gotten through the crowd. “Poe,” he said, stopping awkwardly a few feet away.

Poe looked up from his autotuner, and his face was a perfectly-composed seamless vista of polite interest. “Hey,” he said, “congrats, buddy, you did great!”

“Oh, here, sit down,” Bastian said, moving over on the bench so Finn could sit next to Poe. Finn knew he wasn’t imagining that Poe’s face went carefully blank at this.

_Well, fuck it_ , Finn thought, a little angrily, Poe wanted to pretend nothing was wrong at all but that wasn’t how Finn worked. He sat down, making sure to leave Poe enough room to play. “Thanks,” he said, to Bastian, and repeated it to Poe. “Thanks, the mission was-- I really couldn’t be happier. I learned so much!”

Poe smiled absently at him, fiddling with the tuner. He finally clicked it over to manual and fixed the offending string. “That’s great,” he said. “Man, it’s such a relief, too, we really needed that to go well.”

“Peazy said you were in medbay,” Finn said quietly, diving into it headfirst now the pleasantries were out of the way. “But you were okay now?”

“I’m okay, yeah,” Poe said, waving a hand airily. “The doc and I got in a fight over whether I was cleared to fly that shuttle mission, but I won, in the end, because the med records don’t lie.” He smiled tightly. “I don’t like fighting with the doc, though, so I let her check me over to her heart’s content.”

That sounded okay. Still, though. Finn leaned in a little more, lowered his voice further. “They didn’t recondition you, did they?”

That got a real facial expression out of Poe. “What?” he said, looking horrified.

Probably not, then. “You’d probably remember if they had,” Finn said, a little doubtfully, but hesitantly relieved. You didn’t always remember it, after. Which seemed like it’d be kinder, but it generally was just really unnerving and icky.

“Stars, no,” Poe said, “no, we don’t-- we don’t do that here, Finn.” His expression softened. “I’m sorry you worried,” he said.

“If I worried for nothing,” Finn said, “then I’m glad of that.”

Poe’s expression went sort of uneven, maybe wobbly was a good descriptor, and he let go of the guitar to clap Finn on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Finn,” he said.

“Are you gonna play or what?” the other guitarist asked.

Poe laughed, looking past Finn to make a face at the other man. “Well,” he said, “are _you_? I’m following you, pal.”

 

Finn sat tucked up next to Poe’s side for much of the rest of the evening, basking in the warmth of good companionship. It was so interesting to watch the dynamic of the room, and especially now that he was more attuned to it, he could see how almost everyone had at least some level of a crush on Poe.

He couldn’t blame them, so did he. Poe was so goddamn attractive, and more than that, he was _intense_. When he was focused on you, it made you feel like the only person in the world; Finn had assumed that was just him, but now he could see it was like that for pretty much everyone. It was a good study of charisma, Finn supposed, and observed it with as detached an eye as he could manage. But mostly he kept mentally sliding sideways into really vivid and distracting memories of sex with Poe, which still remained the top two or three positive experiences of his life.

People kept bringing them drinks, and Finn hadn’t had much intoxicating liquor before-- at previous parties, he hadn’t felt comfortable enough, but tonight he felt so safe and warm next to Poe he drank everything they brought him. After enough of that, he was feeling cheerful enough that when Bastian dragged him out to dance, he went.

“I can’t come dance,” Poe said a little later, laughing brilliantly. “If I dance, then who plays? No, no--”

Various people informed Finn that Poe was a great dancer, but nobody wanted him to stop playing, so he stayed where he was, and Finn brought him drinks now, and then inevitably drank most of them himself when Poe was still nursing his previous cup of drink.

“Stars,” Poe said to him at some point, when Finn flopped down next to him on the bench, winded from dancing-- everyone wanted to teach him how to do different dances and it all blended together-- “you’d better drink some water.”

He handed Finn a cup, and there was water in it. Finn drank thirstily, and noticed that Poe was watching him. The way Poe looked at him felt good; Poe looked at him like someone who wanted him, and Finn liked that. More than when other people did the same.

A lot of people did.

He tipped his head back to finish the water, and caught Poe watching him, looking at his mouth, and it made him smile. Only good things came of Poe looking at his mouth like that. He leaned in, and said softly, “So, you know, I was thinking--”

Poe put his finger on Finn’s lips. “Shh,” he said. “Too much drink tends to produce too much truth. Have you ever been drunk before, friend?”

“Am I now?” Finn asked.

Poe laughed, and it was beautiful, he was so beautiful-- especially when he laughed, especially because of the way his eyes crinkled; those crinkles said he’d laughed his whole life, and they went further than that, they said he’d laughed in kindness and joy, not arrogance or cruelty.

“My friend,” Poe said, “you are just about as drunk as it is possible to be and still be ambulatory.” He had taken his finger away from Finn’s mouth, and he patted Finn’s cheek with that hand instead.

“I never have before,” Finn said, a little surprised. “Is this what people do it for, then?”

“Yes,” Poe said, smiling at him. “Take my advice, and drink as much water as you can stand before you go to bed, and leave a cup by the bed so you can drink more water tomorrow morning.”

“Is that what you do about it?” Finn asked.

“Yes,” Poe said, “it absolutely is. In the meantime, though, have fun, but be aware, you’re going to think things are great ideas that really aren’t.”

Finn considered that. “I don’t think I’m having any ideas I wouldn’t normally,” he said.

“Good,” Poe said. Someone called for a particular song, so he pulled away a little from Finn, who leaned on the table to watch him play. It was another one of the songs about false lovers.

_I wish I were a little swallow_

_and I had wings, and could fly so high_

_I’d fly straight away to my false true lover_

_and there I’d be content to die_

Poe sang slow and sweet, and at least one person Finn could see was crying, and it took him until nearly the end of the song to realize with a blinding chill that it was him. He was the false true lover. He’d totally failed to pick up on one of the rules, somewhere, and he’d done exactly the thing he’d been worried about doing.

He’d known that, right away, from the look on Poe’s face he’d known he’d been wrong, but it hadn’t really come home to him quite how badly he’d fucked up until this moment.

Poe finished the song, and someone requested another one. “I’m not prepared for it to be the maudlin portion of the evening,” Poe said. “I’ve had too much to drink to sing about lost loves. If you’re all only going to ask me for sad songs, I’m going to pack up and go home and drink alone.”

There was a general outcry, but the party was starting to break up anyway. Finn sat morosely at the table, dutifully sucking down glasses of water. Poe played a pretty song with no words, and then glanced over at him, and frowned. “I didn’t mean you should stop having fun,” he said.

“You said to drink water,” Finn said. It was like a bird inside his chest, beating at the inside of his ribs, his desire to explain things, to make things right, but he didn’t know the words, he didn’t know how to do anything.

“Well,” Poe said, “yes, but--”

“I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” Finn said.

Poe set the guitar down and finished the drink that had been sitting next to him. “The right thing to do,” he said, “is to go and have fun with your friends.” He stood up.

Finn stood up too. The world reeled a little. “You’re my friend,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Poe said. He stood looking at Finn for a long moment, and something shifted behind his expression, but Finn couldn’t identify it.

“Arana said you can’t be friends anymore once you have sex,” Finn said. He just didn’t know how to keep it in anymore. “Like-- if you have sex with someone then you lose them after. And I didn’t-- I didn’t mean to make that choice.”

Poe suddenly looked tired. “Buddy,” he said, sounding pained.

“No,” Finn said, distressed. “No, you’re supposed to tell me that’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not--” Poe cut himself off. “Let me put my guitar away. You look about ready for bed.”

“Okay,” Finn said, and helped him tidy up, collecting the cups on the table and bringing them back over to the kitchen on their way out.

“I’ll walk you home,” Poe said, and Finn waited until Poe had dropped off the guitar case in the storage room, and then wrapped his arm around Poe’s shoulders. He wanted to touch him, wanted to hang onto him, wanted to make sure he didn’t slip away.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Finn said. The rain was pattering down through the trees, gentle but soaking, and it felt good on Finn’s skin, and it dampened Poe’s hair and shoulders.

“You don’t have to lose me,” Poe said, but he sounded tired and resigned, and not at all like he was telling the truth.

“You’re my first friend,” Finn said. “The first friend I ever had, because Slip and Nines and Zeroes don’t count as friends, and they’re dead anyway, Poe.”

“I know,” Poe said.

“You killed them,” Finn said, and some distant part of his mind scrambled around in horror and tried to stop up his mouth, but didn’t seem to have any effect. “I saw you shoot Slip, on Jakku. You didn’t really kill Nines, that was Chewie, he killed Nines, but I’m pretty sure you shot Zeroes because yours was the black X-Wing at Takodana, and I know he was in a group you fired on.”

“Oh,” Poe said quietly.

“I didn’t mean to tell you that,” Finn said, grabbing tighter onto Poe’s rain-damp skin-warm shoulders. “Shit. I wasn’t going to tell you that. Why did I tell you that?”

“Because you’re drunk, buddy,” Poe said kindly. “Stuff comes out when you’re drunk. All the stuff you’ve been keeping yourself from saying. It’s why it’s bad for you, but it can sometimes be good too. Now it won’t bother you anymore.” And he smiled, but it was a soft, sad smile, with hardly any crinkling around the eyes, and the eye-crinkles were Finn’s favorite part and he felt bereft without them.

“I’m not mad at you for killing them,” Finn said, helpless to stop himself. “I’m not glad they’re dead but I’m not mad at you. You were only doing your job. They were only Stormtroopers. Slip wasn’t even any good at it.”

“They weren’t _only_ anything,” Poe said, gentle but firm. “They were people, and it doesn’t matter how good they were at their jobs or not. But they were enemy combatants and they were shooting at me. That’s how this works.”

“You did the right thing,” Finn said, and thought that over for a moment. “You-- I was with them for years and they never liked me but you liked me right away. You saw something in me that they never did. You were the only one who saw that.”

“I’m not now, though,” Poe said, with a small smile. “Everyone knows, now.”

“I fucked up,” Finn said, and they were-- oh, they were at Finn’s hut. Not Poe’s. Poe was going to leave him here. Because he’d fucked up.

“What did you fuck up, buddy?” Poe asked patiently, getting him in through the door as Finn’s body got confused about not wanting to go in but wanting to bring Poe in with him. “Everything went great.”

“No,” Finn said, catching Poe by both shoulders, though whether to hold himself up or keep Poe from leaving he wasn’t sure. “You. I fucked up with _you_.”

Poe looked at him, but it was dark in here even with the cloud-dimmed moonlight coming through the sky-window, so it was impossible to tell what his expression really was. He pulled gently away, steadying Finn with a hand under his elbow, but he was just switching on the light, and he came back and guided Finn to sit down in the chair so he could help get Finn’s shoes off. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Finn,” he said. “Listen. I’m really screwed-up, okay? I’m a really screwed-up person. And I haven’t been very good about warning you, or making sure you were okay. I’m glad you were smart enough to take care of yourself on your own, okay?”

“I should have talked to you first,” Finn said.

“I never let you,” Poe said.

“That’s not--” Finn broke off, frustrated. “You can’t just. Poe!”

Poe straightened up, and came and straddled Finn’s lap, putting his finger to Finn’s mouth again, holding his lips closed with a touch. And he was devastatingly attractive, damp curls falling into his eyes, and an inexorable sort of tenderness about his expression that stopped Finn’s voice more than the finger on his mouth. “Shh,” he said. “Listen. Finn. You weren’t really aware of it but I was doing a lot of work to make sure we never talked about anything. And I knew what I was doing. Because I’m really messed-up and it’s really hard for me to talk about it. It wasn’t fair to you. It’s my fault.”

“Then let me help,” Finn said. “We can talk about it now.”

Poe was smiling, but it wasn’t really a happy expression; there was a groove between Poe’s eyebrows, like there was when Poe was hurting, or thinking too hard. Finn wasn’t sure what kind of smile it was. “Stars,” he said, “you’re so earnest. Never change, Finn. Whatever happens, never change that.”

“It’s not deliberate,” Finn pointed out. At least Poe had let go of his mouth. That meant he could kiss him. So he did, and it was really nice. Poe’s body was really nice. It felt really good to touch him, even just to be close to him. He was warm, and solid, and damp, and smelled familiar, and tasted of himself, and Finn wanted him.

Poe pulled away, though, and stood up. “Don’t go,” Finn said, distressed. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t-- don’t go. I’ll-- Give me another chance and let us talk this out like grown-up people, and I’ll give you whatever you need.”

“Don’t,” Poe said, looking alarmed. “Don’t promise me anything, Finn. It’s-- I don’t want you to.”

“Please,” Finn said, standing up.

“I won’t leave,” Poe said. “I’m not leaving. It’s all right. Get in bed.” His voice was quiet, sort of resigned, like he was too tired to fight. “I’ll stay.”

“Okay,” Finn said. Poe took his shoes off, and Finn stripped down most of his clothes. Poe kept his shirt on, but climbed into bed with Finn, and Finn wrapped his arms tight around Poe.

Poe laughed, low and soft, and it went straight to Finn’s dick. “You tryin’ to hold me down?”

Finn loosened his grip a little, but he was more than halfway to hard, and his hips kind of moved of their own volition, rubbing him against Poe’s hip. “I, I mean,” he stammered.

“No,” Poe said, turning toward him, “it’s cool, do it,” and kissed him, hot and hungry. Finn would’ve been perfectly happy to just rub off against him, but Poe was open-eyed and sharp-toothed in the half-dark, guiding him with a firm grip and sharp little nips of teeth on his shoulders and neck. Poe’s mouth was on his cock for a blissful little while, now hot and soft and clever, eyes turned up to watch Finn’s reactions with a kind of hungry attention Finn had never been the focus of before.

It drove him a little wild, and he rolled over and pinned Poe down and took his shirt off him, bit his shoulder, his neck, his chest. “Harder,” Poe said, “mark me, c’mon,” and Finn bit him harder, but then discovered that if he sucked Poe’s skin between his teeth and his tongue the blood came up dark under his skin and Poe made the most affecting little cries, whimpering under his attention.

Poe’s body was so beautiful, and Finn worked him over admiringly, mostly just scraping gently with his teeth and tasting Poe’s skin, but leaving enough marks in among the brush-burns still adoring his shoulders and chest that Poe was writhing and panting. Finn was so turned-on he didn’t know what to do. “Poe,” he said raggedly, though Poe looked to be just about at the edge of what he could handle too, “oh, fuck, I don’t think I can last long enough to get inside you.”

Poe whimpered, jerking his hips up; he was naked now, and had his hands fisted in the bedsheets by his sides, like it was against some rule to touch anything, or like somebody was invisibly holding him down. “Come on me,” he panted harshly, “just, come all over me, c’mon, mark me up--”

Finn pushed himself up a little on one arm so he could grab his own cock with his other hand, frantic for contact at how desperate Poe sounded. “Poe,” he gasped.

“Come on,” Poe said, voice going thin, and Finn couldn’t think about anything else now except how beautiful Poe was and how badly he needed -- whatever he was asking for, and he shuddered and came, making a mess all over Poe’s belly and chest where he’d been biting him. And Poe made a desperate, heartfelt noise like it either felt really good or was hurting him, and his face was all distant and his hands were white-knuckled in the bedsheets, and Finn collapsed next to him and bit his shoulder probably too hard, still a little out of control.

“Please,” Poe begged, “ahh--” He wasn’t touching himself, like only Finn was allowed to do that or something, and Finn stared at the moonlight on his skin and wondered what Poe was asking him to do.

“You need to get off,” Finn observed. Poe was clearly on the edge of what he could take, writhing and twitching and _so_ hard, hips hitching up needily.

“Please,” Poe said, wide-eyed and staring, too far gone to focus his eyes. His eyelids were so heavy, lashes dark and irises dark and the moon spilling silver across his skin, bruises coming up dark.

“You look so good like this,” Finn said, surprising himself; it should’ve been gross, but the bruises and the come and the desperation were more appealing than he could account for. Poe had his knees bent so he could push his hips up, even though there was nothing to push against, and Finn slid his hand down to touch him, and on impulse smeared his fingers through some of the sticky mess on Poe’s belly, trailed his hand down right past Poe’s straining cock, and pushed those wet fingers against Poe’s asshole.

Poe made a hoarse, needy sound and shoved down against him, so Finn slid his fingers in and laughed in wonder at how well Poe reacted to it, his whole body arching. Finn fucked Poe efficiently with his fingers, easily finding the gesture that had gotten him so worked-up those couple of nights ago, “Oh stars,” Finn said, “you’re so pretty like this,” _when you_ need _me like this_ , but he didn’t say that, that felt weird to think, like it would be too much to say it.

“Please,” Poe begged, and he was crying out, little broken noises with every push of Finn’s fingers, little bitten-off broken sounds like he was being tortured.

Finn leaned up over him to kiss him. “Look at me,” he said. Poe did, wide-eyed and struggling to focus. “Look at me. What do you need?”

“You,” Poe said brokenly, “please, Finn, please.”

Finn curled his fingers and Poe shuddered, tipping his head back, crying out, so close. “Come on,” Finn said, and bit his neck, “come on, take what you need, come on.”

Poe cried out wildly, scrabbling at the blankets, and shuddered, gasping, but he wasn’t quite there. “Use your hand,” Finn said; he would’ve but he needed his arm to hold himself up so he could see. “C’mon. Do it. Come on.”

Poe shuddered hard, and pried a hand out of the blankets to close around his dick. As Finn had suspected, that was all he needed, and he cried out and came all over himself, all over the mess Finn had left on him, and the noises he made, he was just sobbing with it, and Finn had to kiss him all over his face and his neck.

He pulled his fingers out carefully and wrapped his arms around Poe, holding him close as he sobbed for breath. Finn exercised a little care not to get too sticky, and just held Poe until he subsided a little.

“Wow,” he said, trying to catch his own breath.

Poe was still breathing raggedly like he’d run a race or something, trembling a little, and Finn kissed his neck. “Finn,” Poe whispered, wrapping his fingers around the back of Finn’s neck.

“I’m right here, buddy,” Finn said. Poe seemed really-- vulnerable, at the moment, so Finn didn’t try to go clean up or anything, he just stayed there and held on, even though he really wanted to fall asleep.

After a little bit, Poe tried to snuggle in closer, and Finn decided that probably was a bad idea. He himself wasn’t all that hairy, but he still didn’t want to have to scrape dried come off himself in the morning, and Poe had enough hair on his belly that it was going to be a big mess if things got any stickier. “Hang on,” Finn said, “we gotta-- that’s kind of gross, I gotta clean you up.”

“Sorry,” Poe said, really softly, and Finn laughed self-consciously and dug a dirty shirt out of his laundry hamper, and wet it down with a slug of drinking water from the pitcher. Poe looked kind of-- upset about it, and Finn couldn’t really parse that, so he just set to cleaning Poe up.

“Why are you sorry?” Finn asked, laughing, and paused to kiss one of the bruises he’d left. “I should probably be sorry, I don’t know why I did that so hard. Oh man. I thought these would fade right away, I didn’t mean to bruise you so bad.”

Poe shuddered. “I’m sorry I’m gross,” he said, and his voice was thin like he was actually upset.

“What?” Finn was maybe still a little bit drunk, but that didn’t really explain how he felt like he had really missed something. “You’re not gross, I just made a mess.” He tossed the shirt at the hamper, but then thought better of his state of cleanliness and got out of bed and found the little bottle of sanitizer on the shelf and washed his hands off with it. He came back and Poe was curled tightly on his side in a little ball like he was cold.

“C’mere,” Finn said, and pulled the blankets up, kissing the back of Poe’s shoulder. “C’mere. Stars, you’re pretty, have I told you that?”

“No,” Poe said quietly, really subdued.

“Well,” Finn said, “you are.” His eyelids were getting heavy, his whole body was getting heavy, and he wrapped himself around Poe and tucked his chin over Poe’s shoulder.

He fell asleep without meaning to, and wasn’t aware of anything the whole night; he dreamed maybe that Poe was crying, in his sleep, or not, but he might have just been dreaming it. He also dreamed that Captain Phasma was yelling at him, but he laughed at her and she disappeared, and he slept on, contented.

But when he woke, later, the sun up and birds singing and his head aching badly, Poe was gone.

There was a cup of water on the bedside table, and one of the stims that were good for headaches, laid out for him.

 

______

  


Poe leaned in the doorway of the classroom, waiting for a chance to interrupt gracefully. He was supposed to have been long gone on his errand, but he’d been all the way through his preflight checks and then some by the time he’d realized that he’d never gotten a new respirator clip-- neither the new one from Finn, nor his good spare one from Pava. He wasn’t going looking for _anything_ in the quartermaster’s territory again, he’d learned that lesson well, so Pava it was.

She wasn’t anywhere he’d expected, and he’d wasted a ton of time chasing her around, and finally he’d realized literally everybody was in the big classroom, even some of the mechanics who had no business being away from the hangar where there were always a lot of things waiting to be fixed.

The room was dark, though, and clearly the students were all gathered to watch a holo or something. He could see Pava, she was leaning against the far wall, and she had her flight harness on including the damn clip he needed, but he’d have to step on about five people to get there-- the room was really packed.

Gritting his teeth, he waited for the flourish of music as the opening title rolled to die down so she’d hear him if he called out to her.

The title screen was greeted with some hooting and whistling, and he frowned; that didn’t sound educational. He leaned in the doorway to see what the hell they were watching, and was startled to see his own figure, life-sized, static and resigned-looking-- it wasn’t an official portrait, he’d sat for plenty of those, this one was-- oh come on, it was when he’d come back from that stupid mission with the stupid Mynocks, and somebody’d clearly gotten a photo right after he’d taken his helmet off and he looked like he was posing like a cheesy action-movie holo star, hair tousled and jaw clenched and eyes a little squinted, but really he’d been fighting off a fucking migraine. Really?

And the title scrolled: “[ Dealing With Your Inevitable Crush on Poe Dameron ](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/137217065814/dealing-with-your-inevitable-crush-on-poe-dameron).”

What.

“It’s not a question of if, but when,” the voiceover said. “It’s a natural part of joining the Resistance. Everyone says oh, it won’t happen to me, I’m immune to that sort of thing.” The voice was so typical-educational-holo-narrator polished that it took Poe a minute to recognize that it was definitely Instructor Tanak’s voice. The visual, that wasn’t fair, it was overlaid over the stupid holo footage they’d taken of Poe demonstrating the stupid new tie-down system. Even at the time he’d been sort of incredulous they couldn’t find anyone else better at them than him to demonstrate for training footage. Now it was pretty obvious that it was a setup for this: it was a bunch of bending over. “But everyone in the Resistance eventually ends up with a crush on Poe Dameron.”

Poe’s holo self was wearing ratty old work pants and a worn-translucent undershirt smeared with grease, and he’d never noticed how much he’d habitually tilted his head to get his hair off his forehead with that haircut. Nobody’d ever told him quite how tight those old pants had fit across his ass either. Well, they were long-since consigned to the scrap bin, so too late to worry now. Yikes, that had been like, a year ago now.

The footage cut to one of the mechanics Poe had been working with for ages, a middle-aged Corellian named Yana. “You may think you’re immune to his looks, but then he remembers your name after only ever having met you once, and claps you on the shoulder, and calls you ‘buddy’ and smiles at you,” Yana sighed. “And it only gets worse from there.”

Poe had sort of been expecting that this was a joke intro and soon it would segue into another video, like maybe they had intros like this making fun of everybody, but there was only another shot of him, a vid shot, and he clearly didn’t know anyone was taking his picture, like it was zoomed in from really far away. He was standing on the ladder to the cockpit of his X-wing, clearly watching someone do something, and the wind was ruffling his hair, and he had his mouth kind of open like a twit, and great, there he went, licking his lower lip, probably preparatory to speaking; he grinned, in the vid, like he was about to call out, and then the shot ended. The voiceover had been saying, “Don’t be alarmed. These are natural feelings. Take comfort in the fact that you aren’t alone. And you can console yourself in the knowledge that he does this to everyone.”

“It’s not his fault,” Pava said, a head-and-shoulders shot, she was nicely-groomed and made up like she usually didn’t bother to do, so either they’d caught her when she was on her way to a party or she’d actually dressed up for the video. “That’s the thing you have to keep in mind. He’s really like that. He’s really actually nice to people. He’s completely sincere.”

Cut to a holo of him-- fuck, he was drunk, it was old, he’d been at the Academy, about seventeen, blasted on Corellian Death Rum, dancing on a table, with his stupid Academy uniform half-off, no shirt, suspenders slipping off his shoulders, making doe eyes at the camera, lips pursed provocatively around the neck of the bottle, body twisted, back arched, looking like he was fucking nine years old or something, playing at being an adult. Thankfully it was still, not video. “Methods of coping with this affliction vary by individual,” the voiceover was saying. “Some people pretend they don’t feel it. Others give themselves in to it. A few daring individuals have tried to actually go for it. But it seems that despite a wild youth, Poe has settled into a reasonably responsible adulthood. It is not recommended that you pursue him aggressively.”

It cut to footage of Garella Unaeron, who he’d actually hooked up with at the Academy. Sure enough, she was identified in a label at the bottom of the screen: Captain Garella Unaeron of the Republic, and underneath it, subtitled, _Shared Single, Memorable, Wild Night Of Passion_. “I just broke into his quarters and got naked and lay in his bed until he showed up,” she said, a little smug. She was still with the Republic, how the hell had they gotten an interview with her? She’d aged nicely, she looked really good. That had been a fun night but she was also pretty personally reprehensible so that had been as far as the relationship had gone. “It went well for me, but, I mean, we were also like eighteen, so. I don’t imagine that’d go as well now he’s defected to the Resistance.”

At that, a bunch of people in the room whooped-- ahh, all the other defectors. He was sort of too taken-aback at seeing Garella’s face to react to that.

“But, I mean, if you go for it,” Garella said, “much as I loathe his politics I gotta say, he’s really great in the sack, I don’t imagine he’s lost the knack, it’s not the kind of thing you get _worse_ at with practice.” Her expression changed suddenly, twisting into suspicion. ‘Wait, who did you say you were again?” The footage jerked and cut out.

The next shot was Naeher Adamant, who’d gotten killed last year not long after defecting to the Resistance, and Poe grabbed the door-frame, to see his face again, craggy and handsome, that scar down his cheekbone, Poe’d been there when it had been acquired but he hadn’t seen Naeher in years, had been making plans to see him again when he’d gotten the news that he’d been lost. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” Naeher said, and he never smiled, but he was looking a little smug. His name was at the bottom of the screen, with his rank, and underneath it the subtitle _Had Actual, Grown-Up Sexual/Romantic Relationship_. “I can tell you, though, that Dameron is never other than entirely genuine. There’s no need to play games.”

Next was a head-and-shoulders shot of a mechanic who’d worked with Poe closely a couple of times, a droid. “I’ve never worked with any other human who went so out of his way to make sure I understood he considered me a person, on par with a biological organism,” the droid said, a little shyly. “It’s not-- I don’t mind, you know, I know what I am, but he’s just-- he’s so _nice_.”

Again, training footage of Poe himself, but it was cropped-- he’d done this holovid with Nunb, last year, showing how to operate the safety harnesses. He was standing there looking like an ass out of context, with the original vid’s narration stripped out-- he’d been pointing out the harness points on cue, and making dumb faces at Nunb because it had been funny, but by himself he was just standing there randomly gesturing at his chest and crotch and grimacing and twisting his mouth. He looked like a complete ass.

“So when you find yourself suffused with inappropriate feelings for this particular individual, just remember, you’re not alone. Speak to your counselor about what coping method is best for you. And above all, don’t make it weird: we’re relying on him, and his possibly-unholy combination of dashing charm and uncanny good luck. Try to use your misplaced erotic energy wisely.”

The vid closed on another holovid of Poe clearly watching someone speak; he was staring off into the distance sort of vacantly, half-smiling, again with the fucking wind ruffling his hair just fucking so, how fucking often were people vidding Poe when he wasn’t fucking looking? This looked like recent footage, too; maybe two haircuts ago.

The title rolled again: “Dealing With Your Inevitable Crush On Poe Dameron”, and then the screen went black. There was a lot of cheering, and Poe looked around the room in numb, sick shock: all these people were _in on this_ , all these people thought this was funny. Pava, Nunb, Instructor Tanak, all the new recruits who’d been following him around like ducklings-- Finn was there, sitting against the far wall, clapping along with the others, face bright with laughter, and that cold-then-hot-then-cold feeling started going through Poe in waves and he realized he was probably going to throw up.

“All right, all right,” Instructor Tanak was saying, quelling the hullabaloo, “it’s a great video, but the point remains: Don’t make it weird, okay?”

The lights came up and Poe’s reflexes failed him, he was still fucking standing there with one hand on the door frame and his damn mouth hanging open, and Pava saw him and shrieked, interrupting whatever else Tanak had been saying.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she said, stricken, and then everybody was looking, and Poe had the crystal-clear thought that he really needed to laugh at this because the only thing worse than a joke you weren’t in on was everyone knowing you weren’t in on it. That kind of shit got you laughed at for _decades_ . That kind of shit made you _legendary_.

Well. He was, apparently, already legendary. The doorframe cracked under his hand. They had a fucking video, with his fucking dead ex-lover from like, almost a decade ago, clearly there were years’ worth of footage in there, it had been a joke as long as he’d been in the fucking Resistance.

At least there hadn’t been any mention of Ranisha. It was a small mercy.

“You’re supposed to be on Anaria by now,” Pava said, ghost-white.

“You have my spare respirator clip,” Poe said. His voice was hardly more than a breath, but it resounded in that silent room. “My good one got broken, remember?” He swallowed, really hard, and sucked in a breath, and he still couldn’t laugh. “What the fuck.” He gestured at the screen. His hand was shaking. It wasn’t funny. He was making this worse.

“Dameron,” Pava said, pained.

That was usually his role. He was usually the one who had to try to make it easier on whoever the others were picking on. He was never the one who’d been laughing along, though. What an idiot he was, to think that might insulate him from the same treatment in turn.

“Just--” he gritted out, so hurt he couldn’t look at her, “give me my fucking vent clip so I can go, I’m already late.”

She fumbled it off her harness and stumbled over someone as she came over to hand it to him, and grabbed his arm, both to balance herself and to detain him. “Poe,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, yanking the clip out of her hand and steadying her before jerking his arm out of her grip too. “Have fun, guys.” He ducked out of the room and was halfway back to the hangar before he had to stop, knees shaking, and lean against a fencepost and breathe, just breathe, to try to get himself together, _fuck_ , they’d clearly been showing that video for ages, fuck, every fucking batch of recruits and trainees, there was a whole lecture devoted to making fucking fun of Poe fucking Dameron, and he knew now and he was going to have to figure out how to keep doing his fucking job anyway. All these people he’d thought were his friends, this whole time--

“Pull yourself together, Poe Dameron,” he said, which was becoming a familiar refrain, basically the soundtrack of his life. He pushed himself up and kept walking, head down.

He heard BB-8 whistling to somebody, and took an extra moment to try to compose his features into something blank and neutral before stepping into the hangar. BB was still hooked into the astromech copilot spot, and someone was standing on the cockpit ladder, leaning there, talking to him. Someone diminutive.

“There you are, Poe,” the General said, turning to look at him.

He swallowed, hard; it was like being a little kid, where you could be brave and deal with just about anything until you saw your mother and suddenly needing to tell her about it made you cry. He cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he said. “I was all set to go and realized I broke my vent clip the other day and Testor had my spare, and I had to go find her.” He held up the offending clip. He should’ve just fucking gone without, it probably wouldn’t have killed him.

Well. It would have, actually, in pretty short order. But. Knowing that was unhelpful.

“I heard,” the General said, climbing down the cockpit ladder. Ah. Someone had commed her. Great. Fucking _great_.

He had to breathe through it a moment before he could talk. “It’s not that I don’t understand that everyone gets made fun of sometimes,” he said, and had to stop again, because his chest was clenching and his eyes were burning and it was like being a fucking teenager again. “It’s not that I think I’m above that sort of thing. I just--” He had to stop and breathe again. “Even my _friends_.”

“Oh,” the General said, head tilting a little, “of course you’d feel that way. Poe,” and she hadn’t used that sweetly pained tone of voice since he was a little kid, and she was reaching for his face. He jerked back.

“I know,” he said. “I know. Everyone gets-- I know.” He swallowed hard, closed his eyes again, took in a deep breath-- it took him a couple of tries to get it all the way in-- and let it out slowly, really slowly. “There’s no time to get worked-up over things. I have to get to Anaria and back.”

“It can wait, I’ve just had a transmission about something,” the General said. And that’s when it hit him, that the fact that she was already here and serenely waiting and not down there finding out just what the fuss was actually about _meant something_. It hit him like a sledgehammer.

He looked at her, completely numb. “You knew,” he said. “You’ve seen that holovid.” _Oh,_ the numbness parted him like a blade, and in its wake was the kind of pain he really ought to be used to but really wasn’t. His knees buckled and he sat down hard on the hangar floor. “Oh,” he said, hollow with it.

The General came over and knelt next to him, and he stared unseeing at the cockpit ladder, totally bereft of any notion of how to get back up again. She’d seen the holovid. She was in on it. She hadn’t stopped them, or told him, or taken his side, or-- the _one thing_ in his _entire life_ , from his earliest memories, had been the knowledge that Leia Organa was never wrong, and if she did something it was because it was the right thing to do, and she had condoned that holovid, and was on the side of all those people who had been clapping and whistling and cheering and _laughing at him_.

Through everything he’d ever done, she’d always been his idol and his role model, and he’d always had the rare gift of knowing that his idol believed in him in return, and that was a _lie_ , and he really didn’t know how he was going to stand up again.

He was going to, of course, that was about the only thing he truly had going for him in this world, so far, that he always got up again, but he had no idea how and he just needed a minute for the pain to recede.

“It sucks to be famous,” she said. “People forget you’re a real person.”

“I hadn’t seen Naeher in years when he died,” Poe said. He was kind of floating, he’d reached that point of pain where everything was just really far away. “I’d sent him a note, I wanted to catch up, but he got killed before the note got there.” He fiddled with the respirator clip. “I guess I’m. Glad he remembered m-me fon--” His voice gave out and he sat there silently, trying to breathe. In, deeper, hold it, out slow. In, deep, hold, out.

The General was in on the joke.

“But it was for a joke,” he said finally. “I’m a joke. I. All my friends.” He shook his head, disbelieving. “All this time.”

“It’s not a joke,” the General said. “Dameron, it’s not a joke. I let them make the video because it was a real issue. It’s part of a longer lecture and it’s not all about you, it’s about not pinning your morale entirely on charismatic leaders. There’s one about me, too.”

He stared at her blankly. “How many of those training holovids did they make me be in just so they could get footage for that?” he asked. “Anyone could’ve demo’d those tie-downs, would’ve made more sense to have someone from ground crew do it, but they insisted on me, and I did it because it seemed weird to refuse. And the crew chief, Toowers, told me not to change, told me to take off my jacket so the tie-downs were easier to see.” He breathed in, out. He’d really considered Toowers a friend, he really had, closer than a whole lot of people. He trusted Toowers with his life, and his astromech reset codes, and that wasn’t nothing.

“Poe,” the General said, “I’m probably the only person on this base who hasn’t ever had a crush on you, because I remember changing your diapers. You’re the poster boy of the Resistance, you’re a giant fish in a medium-sized pond, and you exert a considerable gravitational pull.”

“I’m amazed there wasn’t footage of me on the fuckin’ _toilet_ in that video,” Poe said hollowly. “All these unflattering pictures and they’re like-- there’s no way that isn’t a joke, General, there’s no way.”

“Most people wouldn’t consider those unflattering,” the General said. “Your perspective is different. I promise you, they’re sincere. They made that holo because of a real issue.”

“Oh come on,” Poe said, feeling his way around the sharp edges of scorn, most of it inward-directed-- even now, he couldn’t lash out at Leia Organa-- “the one where I’m falling off a fucking table with vomit on my pants and I’m like twelve, what the fuck was that? _Nobody_ ’s hot at that age.”

“Your father sent me a copy of that photo,” the General said. “He captioned it, _he takes after his mother_.” Poe stared at her. “He was so proud, Poe. And for the record, you were sixteen, and that photo actually wound up in an Academy recruiting holo.”

He shook his head slightly. “What,” he said flatly. Bringing up his Papa was playing dirty and he’d expected better from Organa.

“I didn’t give it to them,” she said, “they found it themselves. Like I said, the Academy had it, sort of buried, in some of their recruiting materials. Maybe it’s not your favorite picture of yourself but a lot of people do sincerely think it’s attractive.”

“That’s _insane_ ,” Poe said, “and if you were anyone other than who you are I would have told you that this entire conversation is bullshit and I would have stormed out of here.” He deflated even further, if that were possible. “But you’re not and I don’t know if my legs work.”

“That’s because you know I wouldn’t lie to you,” the General said, matter-of-fact. “Because I wouldn’t. Poe, you need to understand, in many cases, it’s not _you_ they’re infatuated with so much as your reputation. The whole thing. The missions you’ve completed, the insane situations you’ve survived-- you have a mystique. You’re a personality to them, more than a person; you’re a celebrity. So it’s not personal, and it’s certainly not mocking. Many of these recruits are fascinated with you. And when they meet you, because you really are a very genuine and kind and attractive person, they don’t know what to do with these feelings.”

“That’s _literally insane_ ,” Poe said.

“I understand that,” the General said. “I do. But it’s human nature, Dameron. People get fascinated by celebrity. Do you think there aren’t holovids about me? There always have been. Sometimes I know about them and sometimes I don’t.”

“But you knew about this one,” he said, circling back to that.

“I did,” she said. “I would not have approved it if I thought it was meant unkindly. I made them add the caveat on the end about not making it weird. Which, I should mention, I got from you.”

“Did you now,” he said, skeptical.

“You’re always saying that,” she said. “It’s not weird if you don’t make it weird. I thought it was fitting.” She moved a little closer to him, and this time he didn’t flinch away from her and let her put her arms around him. “Oh, Poe. Even if you weren’t so good-- even if I didn’t rely on you-- I wouldn’t let them hurt you. But you are, Poe. You are that good. You are a celebrity, and unlike many, you actually deserve it, because the legends about you _are_ all true.”

He let his forehead rest against her shoulder. “They interviewed my dead ex-lover to make fun of me,” he said dazedly.

“He wasn’t dead at the time,” the General said. “Oh, Poe. The holo isn’t about you at all. The legend isn’t _really_ about you. You’re the core of it, and it’s worse than for most because it’s so demonstrably true, all of it. But it’s not about _you_ , dearest, not really. It’s about your legend.”

“I’m not a legend,” Poe said weakly. He was feeling really drained. It was stupid, it was like being a teenager again. “I’m just me.”

“You are, though,” the General said. She was petting his back, gently, like she had when he was a child. “You’ll be in history books, unless we lose so badly they erase us completely. How you’re portrayed will depend on whether we win or not, but you’ll certainly be in there, and so will I.”

“And in the history holos they’ll have supplemental materials for the kids to use writing their essays,” Poe said glumly, “and everyone’s favorite supplemental primary source will be that fucking holo.”

The General laughed, a rich and genuine noise. “Yes,” she said, “I dare say it will. Along with the rest of the holopics from that session where you did eventually fall off that table.”

Poe sat up. “What,” he said.

She laughed again. “I made them restrict it to only one example in the holovid,” she said. “And _not_ the one where your ass was showing. Poe, you were _spectacularly_ drunk.”

“Corellian Death Rum,” he said. “I think now it’d just kill me outright but I was young and strong, and those suspenders, they’d get you through anything.”

“Wouldn’t necessarily hold your pants up, though,” the General observed.

“Well,” he said, “no, not if you took them off.”

“Come on,” she said. “I need you to come up to my office. I’m going to give the Anaria mission to someone else. Something’s just come up and I need you for it.”

“Wait,” he said, “really?”

“Yes,” she said. “And I’ll get Pava a new respirator clip, don’t worry about it. Keep that one. I have to brief you, though.”

“Should I bring my astromech?” he asked, glancing over at where BB-8 was still sitting patiently in the cockpit.

“Oh,” she said, “probably, there’ll be a new star chart.”

“Come down, B,” he said, climbing to his feet and brushing himself off.

BB-8 unplugged emself and rolled over to nudge against Poe’s leg. “I knew about the holovid,” ey admitted, a little embarrassed. “What was so distressing about it? I thought it was a positive thing!”

Poe nudged BB with his calf. “Don’t worry about it, Beep,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.” BB-8 didn’t know anything about awkward childhoods and the sorts of things humans did to other juvenile humans. Ey wasn’t great with sarcasm or unkindness either. As with most droids, the nuances of human relationships eluded em.

“You’ll like this mission,” the General said. “Trust me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a wild ride, folks. This isn't the end but this is like, a moment to pause. Sorry if it's been wilder than I meant it to be. My acknowledgements from the first end note are below. Please, if you haven't, kudos the art post! And thanks, again, to the beta-readers, for whom this may have also been a wilder ride than anticipated.   
> When I started, nine weeks seemed like forever, but time isn't real, you know?

**Author's Note:**

> This was basically a Big Bang that [Alby](http://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves) and I did by ourselves. We are overachievers, or possibly just nuts, but given how pretty both Oscar Isaac and John Boyega are, I don't think we can really be blamed.
> 
> Thanks is due for crucial beta reading help by:  
> [wyomingnot](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wyomingnot), [salamanderinspace](http://archiveofourown.org/users/salamanderinspace), [stayshinysays](http://stayshinysays.tumblr.com/), [s-leary](http://s-leary.tumblr.com), and Kat Quigley and Laura P, whose online presences I do not know how to properly link to. Whether I took your advice or not, it was definitely important.  
> And I have probably forgotten someone. I will edit to fix it when I remember.  
> Any remaining continuity, grammar, pacing, etc. errors are definitely mine and I may or may not fix them.
> 
> OH YES thanks to [Fictionality](http://fictionality.tumblr.com) for the crucial consultations on the matter of Poe Dameron: Space Latino.  
> And thanks to [kiwisson](http://kiwisson.tumblr.com) for the invaluable advice on alternative pronouns for BB-8!
> 
> Also much thanks to everyone on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bomberqueen17/) and on [Dreamwidth](http://dragonlady7.dreamwidth.org/) who has been interested and supportive and involved. Come over and say hi and send me comments and asks and chats, I am intermittently terrible at answering but it makes my day every time.  
> (MAYBE THEY'LL BRING REPLIES BACK FOR APRIL FOOLS JUST KIDDING)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Ablutions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6405631) by [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves)
  * [Cover for "Home Out In The Wind" by bomberqueen17](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8811964) by [RunawayMarbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayMarbles/pseuds/RunawayMarbles)




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